The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Full Audiobook (Leo Tolstoy) - The Death of Ivan Ilyich [Gold Edition]

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(00:42):
support us in continuing to upload more and more audiobooks
for free. Let's make the world a better place through
books together. Pigeon Publishing House presents The Death of Ivan
Iliach author Leo Tolstoy. Preface. First published in eighteen eighty six.

(01:07):
The Death of Ivan Iliitch is widely regarded as one
of Leo Tolstoy's greatest short novels and one of the
most profound meditations on mortality in all of literature. Written
after Tolstoy's own spiritual awakening in the late eighteen seventies.
The work reflects his deep preoccupation with life sultimate questions,
what does it mean to live authentically? How should one

(01:30):
confront death? The novella tells the story of Ivan Iliitch,
a respected judge who has lived a comfortable, conventional life.
When he becomes terminally ill, he is forced to confront
the emptiness of his existence and the inevitability of death.
Tolstoy's genius lies in the stark realism of his depiction,

(01:50):
the social hypocrisies of Ivan's colleagues, the false comfort of
his family, and the raw terror of his inner struggle.
Yet out of this darkness in E merges a glimmer
of spiritual truth, a recognition of compassion, humility, and the
possibility of redemption. Though written in nineteenth century Russia, the
themes of the Death of Ivan Ilyitch are timeless. The

(02:14):
novella speaks to the fears and denials surrounding death that
persists today, while also offering an invitation to live more
honestly and courageously. It is both unsettling and consoling, a
work that challenges readers to examine their own lives in
the light of Mortality Chapter one. During an interval in

(02:37):
the Melvinski trial and the large building of the Law Courts,
the members and public prosecutor met in ivan Igorovic Schebek's
private room, where the conversation turned on the celebrated Krassovsky case.
Vador Vassilievitch warmly maintained that it was not subject to
their jurisdiction. Ivan Igorovic maintained the contrary, while Peter Ivanovitch,

(02:57):
not having entered into the discussion at the state, took
no part in it, but looked through the gazette which
had just been handed in. Gentlemen, he said, Ivanilik has died.
You don't say so. Here, read it yourself, replied Peter Ivanovitch,
handing Fador Vassilievitch the paper, still damp from the press.

(03:19):
Surrounded by a black border, were the words Prascovia Fiedorovna
Glovina with profound sorrow, informs relatives and friends of the
demise of her beloved husband Ivanilik Golovin, member of the
Court of Justice, which occurred on February the fourth of
this year, eighteen eighty two. The funeral will take place
on Friday at one o'clock in the afternoon. Ivanilik had

(03:41):
been a colleague of the gentleman present and was liked
by them all. He had been ill for some weeks,
with an illness said to be incurable. His post had
been kept open for him, but there had been conjectures
that in case of his death, Alexei might receive his appointment,
and that either Vinikov or Stable would succeed alone. So

(04:01):
on receiving the news of ivan Ilika's death, the first
thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room
was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among
themselves or their acquaintances. I shall be sure to get
stables place or Vinikov's fought Fudor Vasilievitch. I was promised
that long ago, and the promotion means an extra eight

(04:22):
hundred roubles a year for me, besides the allowance. Now
I must apply for my brother in law's transfer from Kaluga,
thought Peter Ivanovitch. My wife will be very glad, and
then she won't be able to say that I never
do anything for her relations. I thought he would never
leave his bed again, said Peter Ivanovitch aloud. It's very sad,

(04:46):
but what really was the matter with him? The doctors
couldn't say, at least they could, but each of them
said something different. When last I saw him, I thought
he was getting better, and I have been to see
him since the holidays. I always meant to go. Had
he any property, I think his wife had a little,

(05:10):
but something quiet, trifling. We shall have to go to
see her. But they live so terribly far away, far
away from you. You mean, everything's far away from your place.
You see. He never can forgive my living on the
other side of the river, said Peter Ivanovitch, smiling at Sebek,

(05:32):
then still talking of the distances between different parts of
the city, they returned to the court. Besides considerations as
to the possible transfers and promotions likely to result from
ivan Ilika's death, the mere fact of the death of
a near acquaintance aroused, as usual in all who heard
of it, the complacent feeling that it is he who
is dead and not I. Each one fodder felt, well,

(05:56):
he's dead, but I'm alive. But the more intimate of
Ivanilika's acquaintances, his so called friends could not help thinking
also that they would now have to fulfill the very
tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and
paying a visit of condolence to the widow. But door
Vassilievitch and Peter Ivanovitch had been his nearest acquaintances. Peter

(06:19):
Ivanovitch had studied law with Ivanilik and had considered himself
to be under obligations to him. Having told his wife
a dinner time of Ivanilika's death and of his conjecture
that it might be possible to get her brother transferred
to their circuit, Peter Ivanovitch sacrificed his usual nap, put
on his evening clothes, and drove to Ivanilika's house. At

(06:42):
the entrance stood a carriage in two cabs leaning against
the wall. In the hall. Downstairs, near the cloak stand
was a coffin lid covered with cloth of gold, ornamented
with gold cord and tassels that had been polished up
with metal powder. Two ladies in black were taking off
their fur cloaks. Peter Ivanovitch recognized one of them as

(07:02):
ivan Ilika's sister, but the other was a stranger to him.
His colleague Schwartz was just coming downstairs, but on seeing
Peter Ivanovitch enter, he stopped and winked at him, as
if to say, Ivanilik has made a mess of things,
not like you and me. Schwartz's face, with his Piccadilly
whiskers and his slim figure in evening dress, had as

(07:24):
usual an air of elegant solemnity, which contrasted with the
playfulness of his character, and had a special piquancy here,
or so it seemed to Peter Ivanovitch. Peter Ivanovitch allowed
the ladies to precede him and slowly followed them upstairs.
Schwartz did not come down, but remained where he was,
and Peter Ivanovitch understood that he wanted to arrange where

(07:45):
they should play bridge that evening. The ladies went upstairs
to the widow's room, and Schwartz, with seriously compressed lips
but a playful look in his eyes, indicated by a
twist of his eyebrows, the room to the right where
the body lay. Peter arry Ivanovitch, like everyone else on
such occasions, entered feeling uncertain what he would have to do.

(08:06):
All he knew was that at such times it is
always safe to cross oneself, but he was not quite
sure whether one should make ubsizences while doing so. He
therefore adopted a middle course. On entering the room, he
began crossing himself and made a slight movement resembling a bow.
At the same time, as far as the motion of

(08:28):
his head and arm aloud, he surveyed the room. Two
young men, apparently nephews, one of whom was a high
school pupil, were leaving the room, crossing themselves as they
did so. An old woman was standing motionless, and a
lady with strangely arched eyebrows was saying something to her
in a whisper. A vigorous, resolute church reader in a

(08:49):
frock coat was reading something in a loud voice with
an expression that precluded any contradiction. The butler's assistant, Jerasim,
stepping lightly in front of Peter Ivanovitch, was strewing something
on the floor. Noticing this, Peter Ivanovitch was immediately aware
of a faint odor of a decomposing body. The last

(09:11):
time he had called on Ivanilik, Peter Ivanovitch had seen
Jerasim in the study. Ivanilik had been particularly fond of him,
and he was performing the duty of a sick nurse.
Peter Ivanovitch continued to make the sign of the cross, slightly,
inclining his head in an intermediate direction between the coffin,
the reader and the ikons on the table in a

(09:33):
corner of the room. Afterwards, when it seemed to him
that this movement of his arm in crossing himself had
gone on too long, he stopped and began to look
at the corpse. The dead man lay, as dead men
always lie, in especially heavy way, his rigid limbs sunk
in the soft cushions of the coffin, with the head
forever bowed on the pillow. His yellow waxen brow with

(09:56):
bald patches over his sunken temples, was thrust up in
the way peculiar ties the dead, the protruding nose seeming
to press on the upper lip. He was much changed
and grown even thinner since Peter Ivanovitch had last seen him,
But as is always the case with the dead, his
face was handsomer and above all more dignified than when
he was alive. The expression on the face said that

(10:18):
what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly. Besides this,
there was in that expression a reproach and a warning
to the living. This warning seemed to Peter Ivanovitch out
of place, or at least not applicable to him. He
felt a certain discomfort, and so he hurriedly crossed himself
once more, in turned and went out of the door,

(10:39):
too hurriedly and too regardless of propriety, As he himself
was aware, Schwartz was waiting for him in the adjoining room,
with legs spread wide apart in both hands, toying with
his top hat behind his back. The mere sight of
that playful, well groomed, an elegant figure refreshed Peter Ivanovitch.
He felt that Schwartz was a above all these happenings

(11:01):
and would not surrender to any depressing influences. His very
look said that this incident of a church service, for
Ivanillik could not be a sufficient reason for infringing the
order of the session. In other words, that it would
certainly not prevent his unwrapping a new pack of cards
and shuffling them that evening while a footman placed fresh
candles on the table. In fact, that there was no

(11:22):
reason for supposing that this incident would hinder their spending
the evening. Agreeably. Indeed, he said this in a whisper,
as Peter Ivanovitch passed him, proposing that they should meet
for a game at Fodor Vassilievitch's. But apparently Peter Ivanovitch
was not destined to play bridge. That evening, Prascovia Fyedorovna,

(11:42):
a short, fat woman who, despite all efforts to the contrary,
had continued to broaden steadily from her shoulders downwards, and
who had the same extraordinarily arched eyebrows as the lady
who had been standing by the coffin, dressed all in black,
her head covered with lace, came out of her own
room with some other ladies, conducted him to the room
where the dead body lay and said the service will

(12:03):
begin immediately. Please go in. Schwartz, making an indefinite bow,
stood still, evidently neither accepting nor declining this invitation. Prascovia Fodorovna,
recognizing Peter Ivanovitch, sighed, went close up to him, took
his hand and said, I know you were a true
friend to ivan Ilik and looked at him, awaiting some

(12:25):
suitable response. And Peter Ivanovitch knew that just as it
had been the right thing to cross himself in that room,
so what he had to do here was to press
her hand, say and say believe me. So he did
all this, and as he did it felt that the
desired result had been achieved, that both he and she
were touched. Come with me, I want to speak to

(12:48):
you before it begins, said the widow. Give me your arm.
Peter Ivanovitch gave her his arm, and they went to
the inner rooms, passing Schwartz, who winked at Peter Yvananovitch compassionately.
That does for our bridge. Don't object If we find
another player, perhaps you can cut in. When you do

(13:10):
escape set his playful look. Peter Ivanovitch sighed still more
deeply and despondently, and Praskovya Fedorovna pressed his arm gratefully.
When they reached the drawing room, upholstered in pink creton
and lighted by a dim lamp, they sat down at

(13:32):
the table, she on a sofa and Peter Ivanovitch on
a low puff, the springs of which yielded spasmodically under
his weight. Praskovia Fridorovna had been on the point of
warning him to take another seat, but felt that such
a warning was out of keeping with her present condition
and so changed her mind. As he sat down on
the puff, Peter Ivanovitch recalled how Ivanilik had arranged this

(13:55):
room and had consulted him regarding this pink creton with
green leaves. The whole room was full of furniture and knickknacks,
and on her way to the sofa, the lace of
the widow's black shawl caught on the edge of the table.
Peter Ivanovitch rose to detach it, and the springs of
the puff, relieved of his weight, rose also and gave
him a push. The widow began detaching her shawl herself,

(14:18):
and Peter Ivanovitch again sat down, suppressing the rebellious springs
of the puff under him. But the widow had not
quite freed herself, and Peter Ivanovitch got up again, and
again the puff rebelled and even creaked. When this was
all over, she took out a clean cambric handkerchief and
began to weep. The episode with the shawl and the

(14:39):
struggle with the puff had cooled Peter Ivanovitch's emotions, and
he sat there with a sullen look on his face.
This awkward situation was interrupted by Sokolov, Ivanilika's butler, who
came to report that the plot in the cemetery that
Praskovia Fyedorovna had chosen would cost two hundred roubles. She
stopped weeping and, looking at Peter Ivanovitch with the air

(15:01):
of a victim, remarked in French that it was very
hard for her. Peter Ivanovitch made a silent gesture signifying
his full conviction that it must indeed be so. Please smoke,
she said in a magnanimous yet crushed voice, and turned
to discuss with Sokoloff the price of the plot for
the grave. Peter Ivanovitch, while lighting his cigarette, heard her

(15:23):
inquiring very circumstantially into the prices of different plots in
the cemetery and finally decide which she would take. When
that was done, she gave instructions about engaging the choir.
Sokolov then left the room. I look after everything myself,
she told Peter Ivanovitch, shifting the albums that lay on

(15:44):
the table and noticing that the table was endangered by
his cigarette ash, She immediately passed him an ashtray, saying,
as she did so, I consider it an affectation to
say that my grief prevents my attending to practical affairs.
On the contrary, if anything, can I want say, console me,
but distract me. It is seen to everything concerning him.

(16:05):
She again took out her handkerchief, as if preparing to cry,
But suddenly, as if mastering her feeling, she shook herself
and began to speak calmly. But there is something I
want to talk to you about. Peter Ivanovitch bowed, keeping
control of the springs of the puff, which immediately began
quivering under him. He suffered terribly the last few days,

(16:29):
did he have, said Peter Ivanovitch, Oh, terribly? He screamed unceasingly,
not for minutes, but for hours. For the last three
days he screamed incessantly. It was unendurable. I cannot understand
how I bore it. You could hear him three rooms off.

(16:51):
Oh what I have suffered. Is it possible that he
was conscious all that time? Asked Peter Ivanovitch, Yes, she whispered,
to the last moment. He took leave of us a
quarter of an hour before he died, and asked us
to take Volodia away. The thought of the suffering of

(17:12):
this man he had known so intimately, first as a
merry little boy, then as a schoolmate, and later as
a grown up colleague, suddenly struck Peter Ivanovitch with horror,
despite an unpleasant consciousness of his own in this woman's dissimulation.
He again saw that brow and that nose pressing down
on the lip, and felt afraid for himself. Three days

(17:33):
of frightful suffering and the death. Why that might suddenly,
at any time happened to me, he thought, and for
a moment felt terrified, But he did not himself know how.
The customary reflection had once occurred to him, that this
had happened to ivan illikin not to him, and that
it should not and could not happen to him, and
that to think that it could would be yielding to

(17:54):
depressing what she ought not to do, as Schwartz's expression
plainly showed. After which reflection, Peter Ivanovitch felt reassured and
began to ask with interest about the details of Ivanilika's death,
as though death was an accident natural to Ivanilik but
certainly not to himself. After many details of the really
dreadful physical sufferings Ivanilik had endured, which details he learned

(18:18):
only from the effect those sufferings had produced on Prascovia
Fvidorovna's nerves. The widow apparently found it necessary to get
to business. Oh, Peter Ivanovitch, how hard it is, how terribly,
terribly hard, And she again began to weep. Peter Ivanovitch
sighed and waited for her to finish blowing her nose.

(18:41):
When she had done so, he said, believe me, and
she again began talking and brought out what was evidently
her chief concern with him, namely, to question him as
to how she could obtain a grant of money from
the government on the occasion of her husband's death. She
made it appear that she was asking Peter Ivanovitch's advice
about her her pension, but he soon saw that she

(19:02):
already knew about that to the minutest detail, more even
than he did himself. She knew how much could be
got out of the government in consequence of her husband's death,
but wanted to find out whether she could not possibly
extract something more. Peter Ivanovitch tried to think of some
means of doing so, but after reflecting for a while
and out of propriety, condemning the government for its niggardliness.

(19:25):
He said he thought that nothing more could be got.
Then she sighed and evidently began to devise means of
getting rid of her visitor. Noticing this, he put out
his cigarette, rose pressed her hand, and went out into
the ante room. In the dining room, where the clock
stood that Ivanilik had liked so much and had bought
at an antique shop, Peter Ivanovitch met a priest and

(19:48):
a few acquaintances who had come to attend the service,
and he recognized Ivanilika's daughter, a handsome young woman. She
was in black, and her slim figure appeared slimmer than ever.
She had a gloomy, determined, almost angry expression, and bowed
to Peter Ivanovitch as though he were in some way
to blame. Behind her, with the same offended look, stood

(20:10):
a wealthy young man and examining magistrate, whom Peter Ivanovitch
also knew when who was her fiancee as he had heard.
He bought mournfully to them and was about to pass
into the death chamber, when from under the stairs appeared
the figure of Ivanilik's schoolboy's son, who was extremely like
his father. He seemed a little Ivanilic, such as Peter

(20:31):
Ivanovitch remembered when they studied law together. His tear stained
eyes had in them the look that is seen in
the eyes of boys of thirteen or fourteen who are
not pure minded. When he saw Peter Ivanovitch, he scowled
morosely and shamefacely. Peter Ivanovitch nodded to him and entered
the death chamber. The service began, candles, groans, incense, tears

(20:55):
and sobs. Peter Ivanovitch stood, looking gloomily down at his feet.
He did not look once at the dead man, did
not yield to any depressing influence, and was one of
the first to leave the room. There was no one
in the ante room, but Jerosene darted out of the
dead man's room, rummaged with his strong hands among the

(21:15):
fur coats to find Peter Ivanovitch's and helped him on
with it. Well, friend, Jerosine, said Peter Ivanovitch, so as
to say something. It's a sad affair, isn't it. It's
God's will. We shall all come to it some day,
said Jerosene, displaying his teeth, the even white teeth of

(21:36):
a healthy peasant, and like a man in the thick,
evergent work. He briskly opened the front door, called the coachman,
helped Peter Ivanovitch into the sledge, and sprang back to
the porch, as if in readiness for what he had
to do next. Peter Ivanovitch found the fresh air particularly
pleasant after the smell of incense, the dead body and
carbolic acid. Where to, sir, asked the coachman. It's not

(22:01):
too late even now. I'll call round on Fodor Vassilievitch.
He accordingly drove there and found them just finishing the
first rubber, so that it was quite convenient for him
to cut. In chapter two, Ivanilika's life had been most
simple and most ordinary, and therefore most terrible. He had

(22:24):
been a member of the Court of Justice and died
at the age of forty five. His father had been
an official who, after serving in various ministries and departments
in Petersburg, had made the sort of career which brings
men to positions from which, by reason of their long service,
they cannot be dismissed, though they are obviously unfit to
hold any responsible position, and for whom therefore posts are

(22:46):
specially created, which, though fictitious, carries salaries of from six
to ten thousand rubles that are not fictitious, and in
receipt of which they live on to a great age.
Such was the Privy Councilor and superfluous member of very
superfluous institutions, Ilia Epimovic Golovin. He had three sons, of

(23:06):
whom Ivanillik was the second. The eldest son was following
in his father's footsteps only in another department, and was
already approaching that stage in the service at which a
similar sinecure would be reached. The third son was a failure.
He had ruined his prospects in a number of positions
and was not serving in the railway department. His father

(23:29):
and brothers, and still more their wives, not merely disliked
meeting him, but avoided remembering his existence unless compelled to
do so. His sister had married Baron Greff, a Petersburg
official of her father's type. Ivanillik wasle Phoenix de la famille,
As people said. He was neither as cold and formal

(23:49):
as his elder brother, nor as wild as the younger,
but was a happy mean between them, an intelligent, polished
lively and agreeable man. He had studied with his younger
brother at the school of Law, but the latter had
failed to complete the course and was expelled when he
was in the fifth class. Ivanillik finished the course well.

(24:10):
Even when he was at the school of law, he
was just what he remained for the rest of his life,
a capable, cheerful, good natured, and sociable man, though strict
in the fulfillment of what he considered to be his duty,
and he considered his duty to be what was so
considered by those in authority. Neither as a boy nor
as a man was he a todi, but from early
youth was by nature attracted to people of high station

(24:32):
as a fly is drawn to the light, assimilating their
ways and views of life, and establishing friendly relations with them.
All the enthusiasms of childhood and youth past without leaving
much trace on him. He succumbed to sensuality, to vanity, and,
latterly among the highest classes, to liberalism, but always within
limits which his instinct unfailingly indicated to him as correct.

(24:55):
At school, he had done things which had formerly seemed
to him very horrid and made him face disgusted with
himself when he did them. But when later on he
saw that such actions were done by people of good position,
and that they did not regard them as wrong, he
was able, not exactly to regard them as right, but
to forget about them entirely, or not be at all
troubled at remembering them. Having graduated from the school of

(25:18):
law and qualified for the tenth rank of the civil service,
and having received money from his father for his equipment,
Ivanilic ordered himself clothes at Charmers. The fashionable tailor hung
a medallion inscribed Respice finem on his watch chain, took
leave of his professor and the Prince, who was patron
of the school, had a farewell dinner with his comrades
at Donon's first class restaurant, and with his new and

(25:40):
fashionable portmanteau, linen clothes, shaving in other toilet appliances, and
a traveling rug, all purchased at the best shops, he
set off for one of the provinces, where, through his
father's influence, he had been attached to the governor as
an official for special service in the province. Ivanillic sooner
ranged as easy and agreeable a position for himself, as

(26:03):
he had had at the school of law. He performed
his official task, made his career, and at the same
time amused himself pleasantly and decorously. Occasionally he paid official
visits to country districts, where he behaved with dignity both
to his superiors and inferiors, and performed the duties entrusted
to him, which related chiefly to the sectarians, with an

(26:25):
exactness and incorruptible honesty of which he could not but
feel proud. In official matters, despite his youth and taste
for frivolous gaiety, he was exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe.
But in society he was often amusing and witty, and
always good natured, correct in his manner, and bond in
font As the governor and his wife, with whom he

(26:46):
was like one of the family, used to say of him.
In the province, he had an affair with a lady
who made advances to the elegant young lawyer, And there
was also a milliner, And there were carousals with aids
DeCamp who visited the district and after supper visits to
a certain outlying street of doubtful reputation, and there was
too some obsequiousness to his chief and even to his

(27:07):
chief's wife. But all this was done with such a
tone of good breeding that no hard names could be
applied to it. It all came under the heading of
the French saying alfhocajian s passe. It was all done
with clean hands, in clean linen, with French phrases, and
above all among people of the best society, and consequently
with the approval of people of rank. So Ivanilic served

(27:30):
for five years, and then came a change in his
official life. The new and reformed judicial institutions were introduced
and new men were needed. Ivanillic became such a new man.
He was offered the post of examining magistrate, and he
accepted it, though the post was in another province and
obliged him to give up the connections he had formed

(27:52):
and to make new ones. His friends met to give
him a send off. They had a group photograph taken
and presented him with a silver cigaret case, and he
set off to his new post as examining magistrate. Ivanillik
was just as Camaiel Foe and decorous, a man inspiring
general respect and capable of separating his official duties from

(28:12):
his private life, as he had been when acting as
an official on special service, his duties now as examining
magistrate were fair more interesting and attractive than before. In
his former position, it had been pleasant to wear an
undress uniform made by charmer and to pass through the
crowd of petitioners and officials who were timorously awaiting an

(28:33):
audience with the governor and who envied him as with
free and easy gait. He went straight into his chief's
private room to have a cup of tea and a
cigarette with him. But not many people had then been
directly dependent on him, only police officials and the sectarians
when he went on special missions, and he liked to
treat them politely, almost as comrades, as if he were
letting them feel that he who had the power to

(28:55):
crush them, was treating them in this simple, friendly way.
There were then but few such people. But now as
an examining magistrate, Ivanilic felt that everyone, without exception, even
the most important and self satisfied, was in his power,
and that he need only write a few words on
a sheet of paper with a certain heading, and this
or that important self satisfied person would be brought before

(29:18):
him in the role of an accused person or a witness,
and if he did not choose to allow him to
sit down, would have to stand before him and answer
his questions. Ivanilic never abused his power. He tried, on
the contrary to soften its expression, but the consciousness of it,
and the possibility of softening its effect supplied the chief
interest and attraction of his office. In his work itself,

(29:42):
especially in his examinations, he very soon acquired a method
of eliminating all considerations irrelevant to the legal aspect of
the case, and reducing even the most complicated case to
a form in which it would be presented on paper
only in its externals, completely excluding his personal opinion of
the matter, while above all observing every prescribed formality. The

(30:03):
work was new, and Ivanilic was one of the first
men to apply the new code of eighteen sixty four.
On taking up the post of examining Magistrate in a
new town, he made new acquaintances and connections, placed himself
on a new footing, and assumed a somewhat different tone.
He took up an attitude of rather dignified aloofness towards

(30:24):
the provincial authorities, but picked up the best circle of
legal gentlemen and wealthy gentry living in the town, and
assumed a tone of slight dissatisfaction with the government, of
moderate liberalism and of enlightened citizenship at the same time,
without it all altering the elegance of his toilet. He
ceased shaving his chin and allowed his beard to grow

(30:44):
as it pleased. Ivanilic settled down very pleasantly in this
new town. The society there, which inclined towards opposition to
the governor, was friendly. His salary was larger, and he
began to play vint, a form of bridge, which he
thought and added not a little to the pleasure of life,
for he had a capacity for cards, played good humoredly,

(31:05):
and calculated rapidly and astutely, so that he usually won.
After living there for two years, he met his future wife,
Prascovia Fedorovna Michael, who was the most attractive, clever and
brilliant girl of the set in which he moved, And,
among other amusements and relaxations from his labors as examining magistrate,
ivan Illik established light in playful relations with her. While

(31:29):
he had been an official on special service, he had
been accustomed to dance, but now, as an examining magistrate,
it was exceptional for him to do so. If he
danced now, he did it as if to show that
though he served under the reformed order of things and
had reached the fifth official rank, yet when it came
to dancing, he could do it better than most people.

(31:50):
So at the end of an evening he sometimes danced
with Prascovia Fedorovna, and it was chiefly during these dances
that he captivated her. She fell in love with him.
Ivanilik had at first no definite intention of marrying, but
when the girl fell in love with him, he said
to himself, really, why shouldn't I marry. Prascovia Fridorovna came

(32:12):
of a good family, was not bad looking, and had
some little property. Ivanilik might have aspired to a more
brilliant match, but even this was good. He had his salary,
and she, he hoped, would have an equal income. She
was well connected and was a sweet, pretty and thoroughly
correct young woman. To say that Ivanilik married because he

(32:35):
fell in love with Prascovia Fridorovna and found that she
sympathized with his views of life would be as incorrect
as to say that he married because his social circle
approved of the match. He was swayed by both these considerations.
The marriage gave him personal satisfaction, and at the same
time it was considered the right thing by the most
highly placed of his associates. So Ivanilik got married. The

(33:00):
rations for marriage and the beginning of married life, with
its conjugal caresses the new furniture, new crockery, and new linen,
were very pleasant until his wife became pregnant, so that
Ivanilic had begun to think that marriage would not impair
the easy, agreeable, gay, and always decorous character of his life,
approved of by society and regarded by himself as natural,

(33:20):
but would even improve it. But from the first months
of his wife's pregnancy, something new, unpleasant, depressing and unseemly,
and from which there was no way of escape, unexpectedly
showed itself. His wife, without any reason di gayy decur
as Ivanilic expressed it to himself, began to disturb the
pleasure and propriety of their life. She began to be

(33:44):
jealous without any cause, expected him to devote his whole
attention to her found fault with everything and made coarse
and ill mannered scenes. At first, ivanilic hoped to escape
from the unpleasantness of this state of affairs by the
same easy and decorous relation to life that had served
him Heretofore, he tried to ignore his wife's disagreeable moods,
continued to live in his usual easy and pleasant way,

(34:06):
invited friends to his house for a game of cards,
and also tried going out to his club or spending
his evenings with friends. But one day his wife began
upbraiding him so vigorously, using such course words, and continued
to abuse him every time he did not fulfill her
demands so resolutely and with such evident determination not to
give way till he submitted, That is till he stated

(34:28):
at home and was bored just as she was, that
he became alarmed. He now realized that matrimony at any
rate with Prascovia Fridorovna was not always conducive to the
pleasures and amenities of life, but on the contrary, often
infringed both comfort and propriety, and that he must therefore
intrench himself against such infringement. And Ivanilik began to seek

(34:51):
for means of doing so his official duties were the
one thing that imposed upon Prascovia Fedorovna, and by means
of his affair viial work and the duties attached to it,
he began struggling with his wife to secure his own independence.
With the birth of their child, the attempts defeat it,
and the various failures in doing so, and with the

(35:12):
real and imaginary illnesses of mother and child, in which
Ivanilica's sympathy was demanded but about which he understood nothing.
The need of securing for himself an existence outside his
family life became still more imperative as his wife grew
more irritable and exacting, and Ivanilic transferred the center of
gravity of his life more and more to his official work.

(35:32):
So did he grow alike his work better, and became
more ambitious than before. Very soon, within a year of
his wedding, Ivanilic had realized that marriage, though it may
add some comforts to life, is in fact a very
intricate and difficult affair, towards which, in order to perform
one's duty, that is, to lead a decorous life approved
of by society, one must adopt a definite attitude, just

(35:55):
as towards one's official duties, and Ivanilic evolved such an
attitude towards married life. He only required of it those
conveniences dinner at home, housewife, and bed which it could
give him, and above all, the propriety of external forms
required by public opinion. For the rest, he looked for
light hearted pleasure and propriety, and was very thankful when

(36:18):
he found them. But if he met with antagonism and querulousness,
he at once retired into his separate, fenced off world
of official duties, where he found satisfaction. Ivanillic was esteemed
a good official, and after three years was made assistant
public prosecutor. His new duties, their importance, the possibility of

(36:38):
indicting and imprisoning anyone he chose, the publicity his speeches received,
and the success he had in all these things made
his work still more attractive. More children came, his wife
became more and more querulous and ill tempered, but the
attitude Ivanillic had adopted towards his home life rendered him
almost impervious to her grumbling. After seven years service in

(37:02):
that town, he was transferred to another province as public prosecutor.
They moved, but were short of money and his wife
did not like the place they moved to. Though the
salary was higher, the cost of living was greater, Besides
which two of their children died in family life became
still more unpleasant for him. Prascovia Fidorovna blamed her husband

(37:24):
for every inconvenience they encountered in their new home. Most
of the conversations between husband and wife, especially as to
the children's education, led to topics which recalled former disputes, and
these disputes were apt to flare up again at any moment.
There remained only those rare periods of amorousness, which still
came to them at times, but did not last long.

(37:47):
These were islets at which they anchored for a while,
and then again set out upon that ocean of veiled
hostility which showed itself in their aloofness from one another.
This aloofness might have grieved Ivanillic, had he considered that
it ought not to exist, But he now regarded the
position as normal, and even made it the goal at
which he aimed in family life. His aim was to

(38:08):
free himself more and more from those unpleasantness and to
give them a semblance of harmlessness and propriety. He attained
this by spending less and less time with his family,
and when obliged to be at home, he tried to
safeguard his position by the presence of outsiders. The chief thing, however,
was that he had his official duties. The whole interest

(38:29):
of his life now centered in the official world, and
that interest absorbed him the consciousness of his power, being
able to ruin anybody he wished to ruin, the importance
even the external dignity, of his entry into court or
meetings with his subordinates, his success with superiors and inferiors,
and above all his masterly handling of cases of which

(38:50):
he was conscious. All this gave him pleasure and filled
his life, together with chats with his colleagues, dinners, and bridge,
so that on the whole ivan Illika's life can take
tina to flow, as he considered it should duke pleasantly
and properly. So things continued for another seven years. His
eldest daughter was already sixteen, another child had died, and

(39:12):
only one son was left. A schoolboy in a subject
of dissension, Ivanilic wanted to put him in the school
of law, but despite him, Prascovia Fiedorovna entered him at
the high school. The daughter had been educated at home
and had turned out well. The boy did not learn
badly either. Chapter three. So Ivanilik lived for seventeen years

(39:37):
after his marriage. He was already a public prosecutor of
long standing, and had declined several proposed transfers while awaiting
a more desirable post, when an unanticipated and unpleasant occurrence
quite upset the peaceful course of his life. He was
expecting to be offered the post of presiding judge in
a university town, but perhaps somehow came to the front

(39:59):
and and obtained the appointment instead. Ivanillic became irritable, reproached hap,
and quarreled both him and with his immediate superiors, who
became colder to him and again passed him over when
other appointments were made. This was, in eighteen eighty, the
hardest year of Ivanilica's life. It was then that it
became evident, on the one hand that his salary was

(40:21):
insufficient for them to live on, and on the other
that he had been forgotten. And not only this, but
that what was for him the greatest and most cruel
injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary occurrence. Even his
father did not consider it his duty to help him.
Ivanillic felt himself abandoned by everyone, and that they regarded
his position with a salary of three thousand, five hundred roubles,

(40:45):
as quite normal and even fortunate. He alone knew that
with the consciousness of the injustices done him, with his
wife's incessant nagging, and with the debts he had contracted
by living beyond his means, his position was far from normal.
In order to save money that summer, he obtained leave
of absence and went with his wife to live in
the country at her brother's place. In the country, without

(41:09):
his work, he experienced ANWI for the first time in
his life, and not only on WEI, but intolerable depression,
and he decided that it was impossible to go on
living like that, and that it was necessary to take
energetic measures. Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and
down the veranda, he decided to go to Petersburg and
bestir himself in order to punish those who had failed

(41:32):
to appreciate him and to get transferred to another ministry.
Next day, despite many protests from his wife and her brother,
he started for Petersburg with the sole object of obtaining
a post with a salary of five thousand rubles a year.
He was no longer bent on any particular department, or
tendency or kind of activity. All he now wanted was

(41:54):
an appointment to another post with a salary of five
thousand roubles, either in the administration, in the banks, with
the railways, in one of the Empress Maria's institutions, or
even in the customs. But it had to carry with
it a salary of five thousand roubles and be in
a ministry other than that in which they had failed
to appreciate him. And this quest of ivan Ilikus was

(42:15):
crowned with remarkable and unexpected success. At Karskin. Acquaintance of
his f i Yeleen, got into the first class carriage,
sat down beside Ivanilik and told him of a telegram
just received by the Governor, of course, connouncing that a
change was about to take place in the ministry. Peter
Ivanovitch was to be superseded by Ivan Semenovich. The proposed change,

(42:38):
apart from its significance for Russia, had a special significance
for ivanilic because, by bringing forward a new man, Peter
Petrovitch and consequently his friend Zakar Ivanovitch. It was highly
favorable for ivanilic since Satchary Ivanovitch was a friend and
colleague of his in Moscow. This news was confirmed, and
on reaching Petersburg, ivan i Ilik found Zakarivanovitch and received

(43:02):
a definite promise of an appointment in his former Department
of Justice. A week later, he telegraphed to his wife
Zakar and Miller's place, I shall receive appointment on presentation
of report. Thanks to this change of personnel, Ivanilik had
unexpectedly obtained an appointment in his former ministry, which placed

(43:23):
him two states above his former colleagues, besides giving him
five thousand roubles salary and three thousand, five hundred roubles
for expenses connected with his removal. All his ill humored
towards his former enemies and the whole department vanished, and
Ivanilik was completely happy. He returned to the country more
cheerful and contented than he had been for a long time.

(43:46):
Prascovia Fedorovna also cheered up and a truce was arranged
between them. Ivanilik told of how he had been faded
by everybody in Petersburg, how all those who had been
his enemies were put to shame and now fond on him,
how envious they were of his appointment, and how much
everybody in Petersburg had liked him. Prascovia Fiedorovna listened to

(44:07):
all this and appeared to believe it. She did not
contradict anything, but only made plans for their life in
the town to which they were going. Ivanillik saw with
delight that these plans were his plans, that he and
his wife agreed, and that after a stumble, his life
was regaining its due and natural character of pleasant, lightheartedness
and decorum. Ivanilik had come back for a short time,

(44:31):
only for he had to take up his new duties
on the tenth of September. Moreover, he needed time to
settle into the new place, to move all his belongings
from the province, and to buy and order many additional things.
In a word, to make such arrangements as he had
resolved on, which were almost exactly what Prascovia Fedorovna too
had decided on. Now that everything had happened so fortunately,

(44:55):
and that he and his wife were at one in
their aims and moreover, saw so little of one another,
they got on together better than they had done since
the first years of marriage. Ivanillik had thought of taking
his family away with him at once, but the insistence
of his wife's brother and her sister in law, who
had suddenly become particularly amiable and friendly to him and
his family, induced him to depart alone. So he departed,

(45:20):
and the cheerful state of mind induced by his success
and by the harmony between his wife and himself, the
one intensifying the other, did not leave him. He found
a delightful house, just the thing both he and his
wife had dreamed of, spacious, lofty reception rooms in the
old style, a convenient and dignified study rooms for his

(45:40):
wife and daughter, a study for his son. It might
have been specially built for them. Ivan Illick himself superintended
the arrangements, chose the wallpapers, supplemented the furniture, preferably with antiques,
which he considered particularly come Iel Foe, and supervised the upholstering.
Everything progressed and progressed, and approached the ideal he had

(46:01):
set himself. Even when things were only half completed. They
exceeded his expectations. He saw what a refined and elegant character,
free from vulgarity, it would all have when it was ready.
On falling asleep, he pictured to himself how the reception
room would look. Looking at the yet unfinished drawing room,
he could see the fireplace, the screen, the what not,

(46:24):
the little chairs dotted here and there, the dishes and
plates on the walls, and the bronzes as they would
be when everything was in place. He was pleased by
the thought of how his wife and daughter, who shared
his taste in this matter, would be impressed by it.
They were certainly not expecting as much. He had been
particularly successful in finding and buying cheaply antiques, which gave

(46:47):
a particularly aristocratic character to the whole place, But in
his letters he intentionally understated everything in order to be
able to surprise them all. This so absorbed him that
his new duties, though he liked his official work, interested
him less than he had expected. Sometimes he even had
moments of absent mindedness during the court sessions, and would

(47:09):
consider whether he should have straight or curved cornices for
his curtains. He was so interested in it all that
he often did things himself, re arranging the furniture, or
rehanging the curtains. Once, when mounting his step ladder to
show the upholsterer, who did not understand how he wanted
the hangings draped, he met a false step and slipped,
but being as strong an agile man, he clung on

(47:31):
and only knocked his side against the knob of the
window frame. The bruised place was painful, but the pain
soon passed, and he felt particularly bright and well. Just
then he wrote, I feel fifteen years younger. He thought
he would have everything ready by September, but it dragged
on till mid October. But the result was charming, not

(47:53):
only in his eyes but to everyone who saw it.
In reality, it was just what is usually seen in
the huh ho of people of moderate means who want
to appear rich and therefore succeed only in resembling others
like themselves. There are damasks, dark wood plants, rugs, and
dull and polished bronzes, all the things people of a
certain class have in order to resemble other people of

(48:15):
that class. His house was so like the others that
it would never have been noticed, but to him it
all seemed to be quite exceptional. He was very happy
when he met his family at the station and brought
them to the newly furnished house, all lit up. Or
A footman in a white tie opened the door into
the hall decorated with plants, and when they went on
into the drawing room and the study, uttering exclamations of delight.

(48:39):
He conducted them everywhere, drank in their praises eagerly, and
beamed with pleasure at tea that evening, when Prascovia Fedorovna,
among others, things asked him about his fall. He laughed
and showed them how he had gone flying and had
frightened the upholsterer. It's a good thing. I'm a bit
of an athlete. Another man might have been killed, but

(49:00):
I merely knocked myself just here. It hurts when it's touched,
but it's passing off already. It's only a bruise. So
they began living in their new home, in which, as
always happens, when they got thoroughly settled, and they found
they were just one room short, and with the increased income,
which as always was just a little, some five hundred
roubles too little, but it was all very nice. Things

(49:23):
went particularly well at first, before everything was finally arranged,
and while something had still to be done, this thing bought,
that thing ordered, another thing moved, and something else adjusted.
Though there were some disputes between husband and wife, they
were both so well satisfied and had so much to
do that it all passed off without any serious quarrels.

(49:44):
When nothing was left to arrange, it became rather dull,
and something seemed to be lacking. But they were then
making acquaintances, forming habits, and life was growing fuller. Ivanillik
spent his mornings at the law court and came home
to diner, and at first he was generally in a
good humor, though he occasionally became irritable, just on account
of his house. Every spot on the tableploth or the upholstery,

(50:08):
and every broken window blind string irritated him. He had
devoted so much trouble to arranging it all that every
disturbance of it distressed him. But on the whole his
life ran its courses. He believed life should do easily,
pleasantly and decorously. He got up at nine, drank his coffee,
read the paper, and then put on his undressed uniform

(50:30):
and went to the law courts. There the harness in
which he worked had already been stretched to fit him,
and he donted without a hitch, petitioners, inquiries at the Chancery,
the Chancery itself, and the sittings public and administrative. In
all this, the thing was to exclude everything fresh and vital,
which always disturbs the regular course of official business, and

(50:51):
to admit only official relations with people, and then only
on official grounds. A man would come, for instance, wanting
some informal Ivanilic, as one in whose sphere the matter
did not lie, would have nothing to do with him.
But if the man had some business with him in
his official capacity, something that could be expressed on officially

(51:12):
stamped paper, he would do everything positively, everything he could
within the limits of such relations, and in doing so
would maintain the semblance of friendly human relations, that is,
would observe the courtesies of life. As soon as the
official relations ended, so did everything else. Ivanilic possessed this
capacity to separate his real life from the official side

(51:34):
of affairs and not mix the two in the highest degree,
and by long practice and natural aptitude had brought it
to such a pitch that sometimes, in the manner of
a virtuoso, he would even allow himself to let the
human and official relations mingle. He let himself do this
just because he felt that he could. At any time
he chose resume the strictly official attitude again and drop

(51:54):
the human relation. And he did it all easily, pleasantly, correctly,
and even artistically. In the intervals between the sessions, he smoked,
drank tea, chatted a little about politics, a little about
general topics, a little about cards, but most of all
about official appointments. Tired, but with the feelings of a virtuoso,

(52:16):
one of the first violins who has played his part
in an orchestra with precision. He would return home to
find that his wife and daughter had been out paying
calls or had a visitor, and that his son had
been to school, had done his homework with his tutor,
and was surely learning what is taught at high schools.
Everything was as it should be after dinner if they

(52:37):
had no visitors. Ivanillik sometimes read a book that was
being much discussed at the time, and in the evening
settled down to work that his read official papers, compared
the depositions of witnesses, and noted paragraphs of the code
applying to them. This was neither dull nor amusing. It
was dull when he might have been playing bridge, but

(52:57):
if no bridge was available, it was at any rate
beack better than doing nothing or sitting with his wife.
Ivanilika's chief pleasure was giving little dinners, to which he
invited men and women of good social position. And just
as his drawing room resembled all other drawing rooms, so
did his enjoyable little parties resemble all other such parties.
Once they even gave a dance, Ivanilik enjoyed it, and

(53:21):
everything went off well, except that it led to a
violent quarrel with his wife about the cakes and sweets.
Prascovia Fiedorovna had made her own plans, but Ivanillik consisted
on getting everything from an expensive confectioner and ordered too
many cakes. And the quarrel occurred because some of those
cakes were left over, and the confectioner's bill came to
forty five roubles. It was a great and disagreeable quarrel.

(53:46):
Prascovia Fedorovna called him a fool and an imbecile, and
he clutched at his head and made angry allusions to divorce.
But the dance itself had been enjoyable. The best people
were there, and I've Vanilic had danced with Princess Trufanova,
a sister of the distinguished founder of the society Bear
My Burden. The pleasures connected with his work were pleasures

(54:10):
of ambition. His social pleasures were those of vanity. But
Ivanilica's greatest pleasure was playing bridge. He acknowledged that whatever
disagreeable incident happened in his life, the pleasure that beamed
like a ray of light above everything else was to
sit down to bridge with good players, not noisy partners,
and of course to fourhanded bridge with five players. It

(54:30):
was annoying to have to stand out the one pretended
not to mind, to play a clever and serious game
when the cards allowed it, and then to have supper
and drink a glass of wine after a game of bridge,
especially if he had won a little. To win a
large sum was unpleasant. Ivanilic went to bed in especially
good humor. So they lived. They formed a circle of

(54:52):
acquaintances among the best people, and were visited by people
of importance and by young folk. In their views as
to the their acquaintance's husband, wife and daughter were entirely
agreed and tacitly and unanimously kept at arm's length and
shook off the various shabby friends and relations, who, with
much show of affection, gushed into the drawing room with
its Japanese plates on the walls. Soon these shabby friends

(55:17):
ceased to obtrude themselves, and only the best people remained
in the Golovan set. Young men made up to Lisa
and Petrushev and examining magistrate in Dmitry Ivanovitch, Petroshev's son
and sol Air began to be so attentive to her
that Ivanilik had already spoken to Prascovia Fedorovna about it,
and considered whether they should not arrange a party for them,

(55:38):
or get up some private theatricals. So they lived, and
all went well without change, and life flowed pleasantly. Chapter four.
They were all in good health. It could not be
called ill health if Ivanilik sometimes said that he had
a queer taste in his mouth and felt some discomfort

(55:58):
in his left side. But this discomfort increased, and, though
not exactly painful, grew into a sense of pressure in
his side, accompanied by ill humor, and his irritability became
worse and worse, and began to mar the agreeable, easy
and correct life that had established itself in the Gullovan family.
Quarrels between husband and wife became more and more frequent,

(56:21):
and soon the ease and amenity disappeared, and even the
decorum was barely maintained. Scenes again became frequent, and very
few of those islets remained on which husband and wife
could meet without an explosion. Prascovia Fvidorovna now had good
reason to say that her husband's temper was trying. With
characteristic exaggeration, she said he had always had a dreadful temper,

(56:45):
and that it had needed all her good nature to
put up with it for twenty years. It was true
that now the quarrels were started by him. His bursts
of temper always came just before dinner, often just as
he began to eat his soup. Sometimes he noticed that
a plate or dish was chipped, or the food was
not right, or his son put his elbow on the table,

(57:06):
or his daughter's hair was not done as he liked it.
And for all this he blamed Prascovia Fidorovna. At first
she retorted and said, disagreeable things to him, but once
or twice he fell into such a rage at the
beginning of dinner that she realized it was due to
some physical derangement brought on by taking food, and so
she restrained herself and did not answer, but only hurried

(57:27):
to get the dinner over. She regarded this self restraint
as highly praiseworthy. Having come to the conclusion that her
husband had a dreadful temper and made her life miserable,
she began to feel sorry for herself, and the more
she pitied herself, the more she hated her husband. She
began to wish she would die. Yet she did not
want him to die, because then his salary would cease,

(57:50):
and this irritated her against him still more. She considered
herself dreadfully unhappy, just because not even his death could
save her, and though she concealed her exasperation, that hidden
exasperation of hers increased his irritation. Also. After one scene
in which Ivanillik had been particularly unfair, and after which
he had said in explanation that he certainly was irritable,

(58:13):
but that it was due to his not being well,
she said that he was ill, it should be attended
to and insisted on his going to see a celebrated doctor.
He went. Everything took place as he had expected, and
as it always does. There was the usual waiting, in
the important air assumed by the doctor with which he
was so familiar, resembling that which he himself assumed in court,

(58:36):
and the sounding and listening, and the questions which called
for answers that were foregone conclusions and were evidently unnecessary,
and the look of importance which implied that if only
you put yourself in our hands, we will arrange everything
we know indubitably how it has to be done, always
in the same way, for everybody alike. It was all
just as it was in the law courts. The doctor

(58:58):
put on just the same ana towards him as he
himself put on towards an accused person. The doctor said
that so anso indicated that there was so answer inside
the patient. But if the investigation of so answer did
not confirm this, then he must assume that in that.
If he assumed that in that, then and so on.

(59:18):
To Ivanilic, only one question was important, was his case
serious or not? But the doctor ignored that inappropriate question.
From his point of view, it was not the one
under consideration. The real question was to decide between a
floating kidney chronic katar or appendicitis. It was not a
question that doctor solved brilliantly, as it seemed to Ivanilic

(59:42):
in favor of the appendix, with the reservation that should
an examination of the urine give fresh indications, the matter
would be reconsidered. All this was just what Ivanilic had
himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand times in dealing with men
on trial. The doctor summed up, just as brit brilliantly,
looking over his spectacles triumphantly and even gaily at the accused.

(01:00:05):
From the doctor's summing up, Ivanilla concluded that things were bad,
but that for the doctor and perhaps for everybody else,
it was a matter of indifference. Though for him it
was bad, and this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing in
him a great feeling of pity for himself and of
bitterness towards the doctor's indifference to a matter of such importance.

(01:00:26):
He said nothing of this, but Rose placed the doctor's
fee on the table and remarked with a sigh. We
sick people probably often put inappropriate questions, but Telly in general,
is this complaint dangerous or not. The doctor looked at
him sternly over his spectacles, with one eye, as if
to say, prisoner, if you will not keep to the

(01:00:48):
questions put to you, I shall be obliged to have
you removed from the court. I have already told you
what I consider necessary and proper. The analysis may show
something more, and the doctor bowed. Ivanillick went out, slowly,
seated himself disconsolately in his sledge, and drove home. All

(01:01:10):
the way home he was going over what the doctor
had said, trying to translate those complicated, obscure scientific phrases
into plane language and finding them an answer to the
question is my condition bad? Is it very bad? Or
is there as yet nothing much wrong? And it seemed
to him that the meaning of what the doctor had

(01:01:30):
said was that it was very bad. Everything in the
streets seemed depressing. The cabmen, the houses, the passers by,
and the shops were dismal. His ache, this dull, lawing
ache that never ceased for a moment, seemed to have
acquired a new and more serious significance from the doctor's
dubious remarks. Ivanillick now watched it with a new and

(01:01:53):
oppressive feeling. He reached home and began to tell his
wife about it. She listened, but in the middle of
his account, his daughter came in with her hat on,
ready to go out with her mother. She sat down
reluctantly to listen to this tedious story, but could not
stand it long, and her mother too, did not hear
him to the end. Well, I am very glad, she said,

(01:02:18):
Mind now to take your medicine regularly, give me the prescription,
and I'll send Jera scene to the chemists, and she
went to get ready to go out. While she was
in the room, ivan Illik had hardly taken time to breathe,
but he sighed deeply when she left it. Well, he thought,
perhaps it isn't so bad after all. He began taking

(01:02:41):
his medicine and following the doctor's directions, which had been
altered after the examination of the urine. But then it
happened that there was a contradiction between the indications drawn
from the examination of the urine and the symptoms that
showed themselves. It turned out that what was happening differed
from what the doctor had told him, and that he

(01:03:01):
had either forgotten or blundered or hidden something from him.
He could not, however, be blamed for that, and Ivanilik
still obeyed his orders implicitly and at first derived some
comfort from doing so. From the time of his visit
to the doctor, Ivanilic's chief occupation was the exact fulfillment
of the doctor's instructions regarding hygiene and the taking of medicine,

(01:03:24):
and the observation of his pain and his excretions. His
chief interest came to be people's ailments in people's health.
When sickness, debts, or recoveries were mentioned in his presence,
especially when the illness resembled his own, he listened with
agitation which he tried to hide, asked questions, and applied
what he heard to his own case. The pain did

(01:03:47):
not grow less, but Ivanilic made efforts to force himself
to think that he was better, and he could do
this so long as nothing agitated him. But as soon
as he had any unpleasantness with his wife, lack of
success in his official work, or held bad cards at bridge,
he was at once acutely sensible of his disease. He

(01:04:07):
had formerly borne such mischances, hoping soon to adjust what
was wrong, to master it and attain success or make
a grand slam. But now every mischance upset him and
plunged him into despair. He would say to himself, there now,
just as I was beginning to get better and the
medicine had begun to take effect, comes this accursed misfortune

(01:04:29):
or unpleasantness. And he was furious with the mishap or
with the people who were causing the unpleasantness in killing him,
For he felt that this fury was killing him, but
he could not restrain it. One would have thought that
it should have been clear to him that this exasperation
with circumstances and people aggravated his illness, and that he
ought therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But he drew the

(01:04:52):
very opposite conclusion. He said that he needed peace, and
he watched for everything that might disturb it, and became
irritable at the slagh rightest infringement of it. His condition
was rendered worse by the fact that he read medical
books and consulted doctors. The progress of his disease was
so gradual that he could deceive himself when comparing one

(01:05:13):
day with another, the difference was so slight. But when
he consulted the doctors, it seemed to him that he
was getting worse, and even very rapidly, yet despite this,
he was continually consulting them. That month, he went to
see another celebrity, who told him almost the same as
the first had done, but put his questions rather differently,

(01:05:34):
and the interview with this celebrity only increased Ivanillica's doubts
and fears. A friend of a friend of his, a
very good doctor, diagnosed his illness, again quite differently from
the others, and though he predicted recovery, his questions and
suppositions bewildered Ivanillick still more and increased his doubts. A
homeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet another way and prescribed medicine,

(01:05:58):
which Ivanillic took secretly for a while, but after a week,
not feeling any improvement. In having lost confidence both in
the former doctor's treatment and in this ones, he became
still more despondent. One day, a lady acquaintance mentioned a
cure affected by a wonderworking icon. Ivan Illy caught himself
listening attentively and beginning to believe that it had occurred.

(01:06:21):
This incident alarmed him. Has my mind really weakened to
such an extent? He asked? Himself. Nonsense, it's all rubbish.
I mustn't give way to nervous fears. But having chosen
a doctor, must keep strictly to his treatment. That is
what I will do. Now it's all settled. I won't

(01:06:45):
think about it, but will follow the treatment seriously till summer,
and then we shall see. From now there must be
no more of this wavering. This was easy to say,
but impossible to carry out. The pain in his side
oppressed him and seemed to grow worse and more incessant,
while the taste in his mouth grew stranger and stranger.
It seemed to him that his breath had a disgusting smell,

(01:07:07):
and he was conscious of a loss of appetite and strength.
There was no deceiving himself. Something terrible, new and more
important than anything before in his life was taking place
within him, of which he alone was aware. Those about
him did not understand or would not understand it, but
thought everything in the world was going on as usual.

(01:07:29):
That tormented Ivan Illick more than anything. He saw that
his household, especially his wife and daughter, who were in
a perfect whorl of visiting, did not understand anything of it,
and were annoyed that he was so depressed and so exacting,
as if he were to blame for it. Though they
tried to disguise it, He saw that he was an
obstacle in their path, and that his wife had adopted

(01:07:50):
a definite line in regard to his illness and kept
to it regardless of anything he said or did. Her
attitude was this, you know, she would say to her friends.
Ivanilic can't do as other people do and keep to
the treatment prescribed for him. One day he'll take his
drops and keep strictly to his diet and go to
bed in good time. But the next day, unless I

(01:08:11):
watch him, he'll suddenly forget his medicine, eat sturgeon, which
is forbidden, and sit up playing cards till one o'clock
in the morning. Oh come, when was that? Ivanilik would
ask in vexation only once at Peter Ivanovitch's and yesterday
with Shabec. Well, even if I hadn't stayed up, this

(01:08:34):
pain would have kept me awake. Be that as it may,
You'll never get well like that, but will always make
us wretched. Prascovia feeder Rovna's attitude to Ivanilika's illness, as
she expressed it, both to others and to him, was
that it was his own fault and was another of
the annoyances he caused her. Ivanilik felt that this opinion

(01:08:55):
escaped her involuntarily, but that did not make it easier
for him at the law courts too. Ivanillik noticed or
thought he noticed a strange attitude towards himself. It sometimes
seemed to him that people were watching him inquisitively as
a man whose place might soon be vacant. Then again,
his friends would suddenly begin to chaff him in a

(01:09:17):
friendly way about his low spirits, as if the awful,
horrible and unheard of thing that was going on within him,
incessantly gnawing at him and irresistibly drawing him away, was
a very agreeable subject for jests. Schwartz in particular, irritated
him by his jocularity, vivacity, and savoir faire, which reminded
him of what he himself had been ten years ago.

(01:09:40):
Friends came to make up a set, and they sat
down to cards. They dealt, bending the new cards to
soften them, and he sorted the diamonds in his hand
and found he had seven. His partner said no trumps,
and supported him with two diamonds. What more could be
wished for? It ought to be jolly and lively. They

(01:10:01):
would make a grand slam. But suddenly Ivanilik was conscious
of that gnawing pain that taste in his mouth, and
it seemed ridiculous that in such circumstances he should be
pleased to make a grand slam. He looked at his partner,
Mikhail Mikolovic, who wrapped the table with his strong hand,
and instead of snatching up the tricks, pushed the cards

(01:10:21):
courteously and indulgently towards Ivanillik, that he might have the
pleasure of gathering them up without the trouble of stretching
out his hand for them. Does he think I am
too weak to stretch out my arm, thought Ivanilick, and
forgetting what he was doing, he over trumped his partner,
missing the grand Slam by three tricks. And what was
most awful of all was that he saw how upset

(01:10:42):
Mikhail Mikolovic was about it, but did not himself care.
And it was dreadful to realize why he did not care.
They all saw that he was suffering and said, we
can stop. If you are tired, take a rest, lie down,
No he was not at all tired, and he finished

(01:11:03):
the rubber. All were gloomy and silent. Ivanilliic felt that
he had diffused this gloom over them and could not
dispel it. They had supper and went away, and Ivanillic
was left alone with the consciousness that his life was
poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that
this poison did not weaken, but penetrated more and more

(01:11:23):
deeply into his whole being. With this consciousness and with
physical pain besides the terror, he must go to bed,
often to lie awake the greater part of the night.
Next morning he had to get up again, dress, go
to the law courts, speak and write, or, if he
did not go out, spend it homeless, twenty four hours
a day, each of which was a torture. And he

(01:11:46):
had to live thus all alone, on the brink of
an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him.
Chapter five. So one month passed and then another. Just
before the new year, his brother in law came to
town and stayed at their house. Ivanilik was at the
law courts in Prascovia. Fedorovna had gone shopping when Ivanillik

(01:12:09):
came home and entered his study. He found his brother
in law there, a healthy florid man, unpacking his portmanteau himself.
He raised his head on hearing Ivanilika's footsteps and looked
up at him for a moment without a word. That
stare told Ivanilick everything. His brother in law opened his
mouth to utter an exclamation of surprise, but checked himself,

(01:12:31):
and that action confirmed it all. I have changed, eh, Yes,
there is a change. And after that trice he would
to get his brother in law to return to the
subject of his looks, the latter would say nothing about it.
Praskovia Fridorovna came home and her brother went out to her.

(01:12:53):
Ivanilik locked a door and began to examine himself in
the glass, first full face, then in profile. He took
up a portrait of himself taken with his wife and
compared it with what he saw in the glass. The
change in him was immense. Then he bared his arms
to the elbow, looked at them, drew the sleeves down again,

(01:13:13):
sat down on an ottoman, and grew blacker than night. No, no,
this won't do, he said to himself, and jumped up
went to the table, took up some law papers and
began to read them, but could not continue. He unlocked
the door and went into the reception room. The door
leading to the drawing room was shut. He approached it

(01:13:36):
on tiptoe and listened. No, you are exaggerating, Prascovia Fridorovna
was saying, exaggerating. Don't you see it? Why he's a
dead man. Look at his eyes, there's no life in them.
But what is it that is wrong with him? No

(01:13:58):
one knows. Nikolaievitch that was another doctor, said something, but
I don't know what. And Seshchatitsky, this was the celebrated specialist,
said quite the contrary. Ivanilik walked away. When to his
own room, lay down and began musing the kidney a
floating kidney. He recalled all the doctors had told him

(01:14:21):
of how it detached itself and swayed about, and by
an effort of imagination, he tried to catch that kidney
and arrest it and support it. So little was needed
for this, it seemed to him. No, I'll go to
see Peter Ivanovitch again. That was the friend whose friend
was a doctor. He rang ordered the carriage and got

(01:14:44):
ready to go where are you going, Jean asked his
wife with a specially sad and exceptionally kind look. This
exceptionally kind look irritated him. He looked morosely at her,
I must go to see Peter Ivanovitch. He went to
see Peter Ivanovitch, and together they went to see his

(01:15:06):
friend the doctor. He was in and Ivanillik had a
long talk with him, reviewing the anatomical and physiological details
of what, in the doctor's opinion, was going on inside him.
He understood it all. There was something, a small thing
in the vermiform appendix. It might all come right. Only

(01:15:29):
stimulate the energy of one organ and check the activity
of another. Then absorption would take place, and everything would
come right. He got home rather late for dinner, ate
his dinner and conversed cheerfully, but could not for a
long time bring himself to go back to work in
his room. At last, however, he went to his study
and did what was necessary. But the consciousness that he

(01:15:50):
had put something aside, an important intimate matter which he
would revert to when his work was done, never left him.
When he had finished his work, he remembered that this
intimate matter was the thought of his vermiform appendix, but
he did not give himself up to it, and went
to the drawing room for tea. There were callers there,

(01:16:10):
including the examining magistrate, who was a desirable match for
his daughter, and they were conversing, playing the piano and
singing ivanillik As Prascovia Fidorovna remarked, spent that evening more
cheerfully than usual, but he never for a moment forgot
that he had postponed the important matter of the appendix.
At eleven o'clock he said good night and went to

(01:16:33):
his bedroom. Since his illness, he had slept alone in
a small room next to his study. He undressed and
took up a novel by Zola, but instead of reading it,
he fell into thought, and in his imagination that desired
improvement in the vermiform appendix occurred. There was the absorption
and evacuation and the re establishment of normal activity. Yes,

(01:16:56):
that's it, he said to himself. One need only assist nature,
that's all. He remembered his medicine, rose, took it and
lay down on his back, watching for the beneficent action
of the medicine and for it to lessen the pain.
I need only take it regularly and avoid all injurious influences.

(01:17:17):
I am already feeling better, much better. He began touching
his side. It was not painful to the touch. There,
I really don't feel it. It's much better already. He
put out the light and turned on his side. The
appendix is getting better, absorption is occurring. Suddenly he felt

(01:17:39):
the old familiar, dull, gnawing pain, stubborn and serious. There
was the same familiar loathsome taste in his mouth, his
heart sand, and he felt dazed. My god, my god,
he muttered again again. And it will never cease. And

(01:18:00):
suddenly the matter presented itself in a quite different aspect,
vermiform appendix, kidney. He said to himself. It's not a
question of appendix or kidney, but of life and death. Yes,
life was there, and now it is going going, and
I cannot stop it. Yes, why deceive myself? Isn't it

(01:18:25):
obvious to everyone but me that I'm dying and that
it's only a question of weeks days? It may happen
this moment. There was light and now there is darkness.
I was here and now I'm going there where A
chill came over him. His breathing ceased, and he felt
only the throbbing of his heart. When I am not

(01:18:47):
what will there be? There will be nothing. Then where
shall I be when I am no more? Can this
be dying? No? I don't want to jumped up and
tried to light the candle, felt for it with trembling hands,
dropped candle and candlestick on the floor, and fell back
on his pillow. What's the use? It makes no difference,

(01:19:12):
he said to himself, staring with wide open eyes into
the darkness. Death, yes, death, and none of them knows
or wishes to know it, and they have no pity
for me. Now they are playing, he heard through the
door the distant sound of a song in its accompaniment.

(01:19:33):
It's all the same to them. But they will die too, fools.
I first and they later, But it will be the
same for them. And now they are merry. The beasts.
Anger choked him, and he was agonizingly, unbearably miserable. It
is impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer

(01:19:53):
this awful horror, he raised himself. Something must be wrong.
I must calm myself, must think it all over from
the beginning, And he again began thinking yes, the beginning
of my illness. I knocked my side, but I was
still quite well that day, and the next it hurt

(01:20:15):
a little, then rather more I saw the doctors. Then
followed despondency, in anguish, more doctors, and I drew nearer
to the abyss. My strength grew less, and I kept
coming nearer and nearer. And now I have wasted away,
and there is no light in my eyes. I think
of the appendix, but this is death. I think of

(01:20:36):
mending the appendix, and all the while here is death.
Can it really be death? Again? Terror seized him, and
he gasped for breath. He leant down and began feeling
for the matches, pressing with his elbow on the stand
beside the bed. It was in his way and hurt him.
He grew furious with it, pressed on it still harder

(01:20:57):
and upset it. Breathless and in despair, he fell on
his back, expecting death to come immediately. Meanwhile, the visitors
were leaving Prascovia. Fedorovna was seeing them off. She heard
something fall and came in. What has happened? Nothing? I

(01:21:19):
knocked it over accidentally. She went out and returned with
a candle He lay there, panting heavily, like a man
who was run a thousand yards, and stared upwards at
her with a fixed look. What is it, Jean, No,
oh thing? I upset it? Why speak of it? She

(01:21:43):
won't understand, he thought, and in truth she did not understand.
She picked up the stand, lit his candle, and hurried
away to see another visitor off. When she came back,
he still lay on his back, looking upwards. What is it?
Do you feel worse? Yes? She shook her head and

(01:22:07):
sat down. Do you know, Jean, I think we must
ask Leshchetitsky to come and see you here. This meant
calling in the famous specialist, regardless of expense. He smiled
malignantly and said no. She remained a little longer, and
then went up to him and kissed his forehead. While

(01:22:28):
she was kissing him, he hated her from the bottom
of his soul, and with difficulty refrained from pushing her away.
Good night, Please, God, you'll sleep yes. Chapter six, Ivanilik
saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair.

(01:22:49):
In the depth of his heart, he knew he was dying,
but not only was he not accustomed to the thought.
He simply did not and could not grasp it. The
syllogism he had learned from Keyeswetter's logic, Caius is a man,
men are mortal. Therefore Caius is mortal had always seemed
to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not
as applied to himself. That Caius and man in the

(01:23:12):
abstract was mortal was perfectly correct. But he was not Caius,
not an abstract man, but a creature quite quite separate
from all others. He had been little Vanya with a
mama and a papa, with Mitya and Volodia with the toys,
a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka. And while
all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood and youth,

(01:23:35):
what did Caius know of the smell of that striped
leather ball Vanya had been so fond of. Had Caius
kissed his mother's hand like that, and did the silk
of her dress russell so for Caius. Had he rioted
like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had
Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at

(01:23:55):
a session as he did? Caius really was mortal, and
it was right for him to die. But for me,
little Vanya Ivanilic, with all my thoughts and emotions, it's
altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought
to die. That would be too terrible, such was his feeling.

(01:24:16):
If I had to die like Caius, I would have
known it was so, an inner voice would have told
me so. But there was nothing of the sort in me,
and I and all my friends felt that our case
was quite different from that of Caius. And now here
it is, he said to himself. It can't be. It's impossible,

(01:24:37):
But here it is. How is this? How is one
to understand it? He could not understand it, and tried
to drive this false, incorrect, morbid thought away and to
replace it by other proper and healthy thoughts. But that thought,
and not the thought only, but the reality itself, seemed
to come and confront him. And to replace that thought,

(01:25:00):
he called up a succession of others, hoping to find
in them some support. He tried to get back into
the former current of thoughts that had once screened the
thought of death from him. But strange to say, all
that had formerly shut off, hidden and destroyed, his consciousness
of death no longer had that effect. Ivanillik now spent

(01:25:20):
most of this time on attempting to re establish that
old current. He would say to himself, I will take
up my duties again, after all I used to live
by them, and banishing all doubts, he would go to
the law courts, enter into conversation with his colleagues, and
sit carelessly as was his wont scanning the crowd with
a thoughtful look, and leaning both his emaciated arms on

(01:25:42):
the arms of his oak chair, bending over as usual
to a colleague and drawing his papers nearer. He would
interchange whispers with him, and then, suddenly, raising his eyes
and sitting erect, would pronounce certain words and open the proceedings.
But suddenly, in the midst of those proceedings, the pain
in his side, regardless of the stage the proceedings had reached,
would begin its own gnawing work. Ivanillik would turn his

(01:26:05):
attention to it and try to drive the thought of
it away, but without success, it would come and stand
before him and look at him, and he would be petrified,
and the light would die out of his eyes, and
he would again begin asking himself whether it alone was true,
and his colleagues and subordinates would see with surprise and
distress that he, the brilliant and subtle judge, was becoming

(01:26:27):
confused and making mistakes. He would shake himself, try to
pull himself together, manage somehow to bring the sitting to
a close, and return home with the sorrowful consciousness that
his judicial labors could not, as formerly hide from him
what he wanted them to hide, and could not deliver
him from it. And what was worst of all was
that it drew his attention to itself, not in order

(01:26:49):
to make him take some action, but only that he
should look at it, look it straight in the face,
look at it, and without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly. And
to save himself from this condition, Ivanillik looked for consolations
new screens, and new screens were found and for a
while seen to save him. But then they immediately fell
to pieces, or rather became transparent, as if it penetrated them,

(01:27:11):
and nothing could veil it. In these latter days, he
would go into the drawing room. He had arranged, that
drawing room where he had fallen, and for the sake
of which how bitterly ridiculous. It seemed he had sacrificed
his life, for he knew that his z illness originated
with that knock. He would enter and see that something
had scratched the polished table. He would look for the

(01:27:34):
cause of this and find that it was the bronze
ornamentation of an album that had got bent. He would
take up the expensive album, which he had lovingly arranged,
and feel vexed with his daughter and her friends for
their untidiness, for the album was torn here and there,
and some of the photographs turned upside down. He would
put it carefully in order and bend the ornamentation back

(01:27:56):
into position. Then it would occur to him to place
all those things in another corner of the room, near
the plants. He would call the footman, but his daughter
or wife would come to help him. They would not agree,
and his wife would contradict him, and he would dispute
and grow angry. But that was all right for then

(01:28:16):
he did not think about it. It was invisible. But
then when he was moving something himself, his wife would say,
let the servants do it. You will hurt yourself again.
And suddenly it would flash through the screen and he
would see it. It was just a flash, and he
hoped it would disappear, but he would involuntarily pay attention

(01:28:39):
to his side. It sits there as before, gnawing, just
the same, and he could no longer forget it, but
could distinctly see it looking at him from behind the flowers.
What is it all for? It really is? So I
lost my life over that curtain, as I might have
done when storming afour. Is that possible? How terrible and

(01:29:04):
how stupid? It can't be true. It can't, but it is.
He would go to his study, lie down, and again
be alone with it, face to face with it, and
nothing could be done with it except to look at
it and shudder. Chapter seven. How it happened it is

(01:29:27):
impossible to say, because it came about step by step unnoticed.
But in the third month of Ivanillica's illness, his wife,
his daughter, his son, his acquaintances, the doctors, the servants,
and above all he himself were aware that the whole
interest he had for other people was whether he would
soon vacate his place and at last release the living
from the discomfort caused by his presence, and be himself

(01:29:49):
released from his sufferings. He slept less and less. He
was given opium and hypodermic injections of morphine, but this
did not relieve him. The dull depression he experienced in
a somnolent condition. At first gave him a little relief,
but only as something new. Afterwards it became as distressing
as the pain itself, or even more so. Special foods

(01:30:14):
were prepared for him by the doctor's orders, but all
those foods became increasingly distasteful and disgusting to him. For
his excretions, also, special arrangements had to be made, and
this was a torment to him every time, a torment
from the uncleanliness, the unseemliness, and the smell, and from
knowing that another person had to take part in it.

(01:30:35):
But just through his most unpleasant matter, ivan Ilik obtained comfort. Jerosem,
the butler's young assistant, always came in to carry the
things out. Jerosem was a clean, fresh peasant lad, grown
stout on town food, and always cheerful and bright. At first,
the sight of him in his clean Russian peasant costume,

(01:30:56):
engaged on that disgusting task embarrassed ivanilic once when he
got up from the komode a week to draw up
his trousers. He dropped into a soft armchair and looked
with horror at his bare in feebled thighs, with the
muscles so sharply marked on them. Jerosem, with a firm
like tread his heavy boots, emitting a pleasant smell of
tar and fresh winter air, came in wearing a clean

(01:31:18):
Heshian apron, the sleeves of his print shirt tucked up
over his strong, bare young arms, and refraining from looking
at his sick master, out of consideration for his feelings
and restraining the joy of life that beamed from his face,
he went up to the komode. Jerosem, said ivan Illik
in a weak voice. Jerosim started, evidently afraid he might

(01:31:40):
have committed some blunder, and with a rapid movement turned
his fresh, kind, simple young face, which just showed the
first downy signs of a beard. Yes, sir, that must
be very unpleasant for you. You must forgive me. I
am helpless. Oh why, sir? And Jerossem's eyes beamed and

(01:32:02):
he showed his glistening white teeth. What's a little trouble.
It's a case of illness with you, sir, And his deaf.
Strong hands did their accustomed task, and he went out
of the room, stepping lightly. Five minutes later he has
lightly returned. Ivanilik was still sitting in the same position

(01:32:23):
in the armchair Jerosm. He said, when the latter had
replaced the freshly washed utensil. Please come here and help me.
Jerosne went up to him. Lift me up. It is
hard for me to get up, and I have sent
Dmitri away. Jerosm went up to him, grasped his master

(01:32:44):
with his strong arms, deathly but gently in the same
way that he stepped, lifted him, supported him with one hand,
and with the other drew up his trousers, and would
have set him down again, but Ivanilic asked to be
led to the sofa. Jerosm, without an effort and without
apparent pressure, led him, almost lifting him to the sofa,
and placed him on it. That you, how easily and

(01:33:08):
well you do it all. Jerosne smiled again and turned
to leave the room. But Ivanilik felt his presence such
a comfort that he did not want to let him go.
One thing more, Please move up that chair, No, the
other one under my feet. It is easier for me

(01:33:28):
when my feet are raised, Jerosene brought the chair, set
it down gently in place, and raised Ivanilika's legs on it.
It seemed to Ivanilick that he felt better while Jerosine
was holding up his legs. It's better when my legs
are higher, he said, place that cushion under them. Jerosine

(01:33:50):
did so. He again lifted the legs and placed them,
and again Ivanilik felt better while Jerosine held his legs.
When he set them down, I fancied he felt worse, Jerosine,
he said, are you busy now? Not at all, sir,
said Jerosine, who had learned from the townsfolk how to

(01:34:12):
speak to gentlefolk. What have you still to do? What
have I to do? I've done everything except chopping the
logs for tomorrow. Then hold my legs up a bit higher?
Can you? Of course I can? Why not? And Jerosine
raised his master's legs higher, and Ivanilic thought that in

(01:34:34):
that position he did not feel any pain at all.
And how about the logs. Don't trouble about that, sir,
there's plenty of time. Ivanilic told Jerosine to sit down
and hold his legs and began to talk to him,
and strange to say, it seemed to him that he
felt better while Jerasine held his legs up. After that,

(01:34:58):
Ivanilic would sometime times called Jerosseim and get him to
hold his legs on his shoulders, and he liked talking
to him. Jerosine did it all easily, willingly, simply, and
with a good nature that touched ivanillic health. Strength and
vitality in other people were offensive to him, but Jerosne's
strength and vitality did not mortify but soothed him. What

(01:35:21):
tormented Ivanilic most was the deception, the lie which, for
some reason they all accepted that he was not dying,
but was simply ill, and the only need keep quiet
and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result. He, however,
knew that do what they would nothing would come of it,
only still more agonizing, suffering and death. This deception tortured

(01:35:42):
him their not wishing to admit what they all knew
and what he knew, but wanting to lie to him
concerning his terrible condition, and wishing and forcing him to
participate in that lie. Those lies, lies enacted over him
on the eve of his death and destined to degrade
this awful soelimac to the level of their visit, their curtains,
their sturgeon for dinner were a terrible agony for ivan Ilik,

(01:36:05):
and strangely enough, many times when they were going through
their antics over him, he had been within a hair
breadth of calling out to them, stop lying. You know
and I know that I am dying, then at least
stop lying about it, But he had never had the
spirit to do it. The awful, terrible act of his
dying was he could see reduced by those about him

(01:36:28):
to the level of a casual, unpleasant and almost indecorous incident,
as if someone entered a drawing room diffusing an unpleasant odor.
And this was done by that very decorum which he
had served all his life long. He saw that no
one felt for him, because no one even wished to
grasp his position. Only Jerascene recognized it and pitted him,

(01:36:50):
and so ivan Ilik felt at ease only with him.
He felt comforted when Jerasim supported his legs sometimes all
night long and refused to go to bed, saying don't
you worry, Ivanilic I'll get sleep enough later on, or
when he suddenly became familiar and exclaimed, if you weren't sick,
it would be another matter. But as it is, why

(01:37:10):
should I grudge a little trouble? Jeracim alone did not lie.
Everything showed that he alone understood the facts of the
case and did not consider it necessary to disguise them,
but simply felt sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled master. Once,
when Ivanillic was sending him away, he even said straight out,
we shall all of us die, so why should I

(01:37:31):
grudge a little trouble, expressing the fact that he did
not think his work burdensome because he was doing it
for a dying man and hoped someone would do the
same for him when his time came. Apart from this
line or because of it, what most tormented Ivanilic was
that no one pitted him as he wished to be pitted.
At certain moments after prolonged suffering, he wished, most of all,

(01:37:54):
though he would have been ashamed to confess it, for
someone to pity him as a sick child is pitted.
He longed to be petted and comforted. He knew he
was an important functionary, that he had a beard turning gray,
and that therefore what he longed for was impossible, but
still he longed for it, and in Jerosine's attitude towards him,

(01:38:14):
there was something akin to what he wished for, and
so that attitude comforted him. Ivanilik wanted to weep, wanted
to be petted and cried over. And then his colleague
Shabec would come, and instead of weeping and being petted,
ivanilic would assume a serious, severe and profound air, and
by force of habit would express his opinion on a
decision of the court of Cassation, and would stubbornly insist

(01:38:36):
on that view. This falsity around him and within him,
did more than anything else to poison his last days.
Chapter eight. It was mourning. He knew it was morning
because Jerosim had gone, and Peter the footman had come
and put out the candles, drawn back one of the curtains,

(01:38:59):
and be again quietly to tidy up. Whether it was
morning or evening, Friday or Sunday made no difference. It
was all just the same, the gnawing, unmitigated, agonizing pain,
never ceasing for an instant, the consciousness of life inexorably waning,
but not yet extinguished, the approach of that ever dreaded
and hateful death, which was the only reality and always

(01:39:20):
the same falsity. What were days, weeks hours? In such
a case? Will you have some tea? Sir? He wants
things to be regular and wishes the gentlefolk to drink
tea in the morning, thought Ivanilic, and only said no.
Wouldn't you like to move on to the sofa? Sir?

(01:39:42):
He wants to tidy up the room, and I'm in
the way. I am on cleanliness and disorder, he thought,
and said only no, leave me alone. The man went
on bustling about. Ivanilic stretched out his hand. Peter came
up ready to help. What is it, sir? My watch?

(01:40:08):
Peter took the watch, which was close at hand, and
gave it to his master. Half past eight? Are they up? No, sir,
except Vladimir Ivanovitch, the son who has gone to school.
Prascovia Fridorovna ordered me to wake her if you asked
for her? Shall I do so? No, there's no need to.

(01:40:32):
Perhaps I'd better have some tea, he thought, and added aloud, Yes,
bring me some tea. Peter went to the door, but
ivan Illy dreaded being left alone. How can I keep
him here? Oh? Yes, my medicine, Peter give me my medicine.
Why not, Perhaps it may still do some good. He

(01:40:56):
took a spoonful and swallowed it. No, it won't help.
It's all tomfoolery, all deception, he decided, as soon as
he became aware of the familiar, sickly hopeless taste. No,
I can't believe in it any longer. But the pain,
why this pain, if it would only cease, just for

(01:41:18):
a moment, and he moaned. Peter turned towards him. It's
all right, go and fetch me some tea. Peter went out,
left alone. Ivanilic grown not so much with pain. Terrible
thought that was as from mental anguish, always and forever,

(01:41:38):
the same, always, these endless days and nights. If only
it would come quicker, If only what would come quicker? Death? Darkness, No, no,
anything rather than death. When Peter returned with the tea
on a tray, Ivanilic stared at him for a time

(01:41:59):
in per perplexity, not realizing who in what he was.
Peter was disconcerted by that look, and his embarrassment brought
Ivanillic to himself. Oh tea, all right, put it down,
Only help me to wash and put on a clean shirt,
and Ivanillic began to wash with pauses for rest. He

(01:42:23):
washed his hands and then his face cleaned, his teeth brushed,
his hair looked in the glass. He was terrified by
what he saw, especially by the limp way in which
his hair clung to his pallid forehead. While his shirt
was being changed, he knew that he would be still
more frightened at the sight of his body, so he
avoided looking at it. Finally he was ready, He drew

(01:42:46):
on a dressing gown, wrapped himself in a plaid and
sat down in the armchair to take his tea. For
a moment, he felt refreshed, but as soon as he
began to drink the tea, he was again aware of
the same taste, and the pain also reached. He finished
it with an effort, and then lay down, stretching out
his legs and dismissed Peter. Always the same. Now a

(01:43:10):
spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages,
and always pain, always pain, always despair, and always the same.
When alone, he had a dreadful and distressing desire to
call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others present,
it would be still worse. Another dose of morphine to
lose consciousness. I will tell him, the doctor, that he

(01:43:32):
must think of something else. It's impossible, impossible to go
on like this. An hour and another passed like that.
But now there is a ring at the door bell.
Perhaps it's the doctor it is. He comes in, fresh, hearty,
plump and cheerful, with that look on his face that

(01:43:54):
seems to say, there, now you're in a panic about something,
but will arrange it all for you directly. The doctor
knows this expression is out of place here, but he
has put it on once for all and can't take
it off, like a man who has put on a
frock coat in the morning to pay a round of calls.
The doctor rubs his hands vigorously and reassuringly. B r

(01:44:16):
r how cold it is. There's such a sharp frost.
Just let me warm myself, he says, as if it
were only a matter of waiting till he was warm,
and then he would put everything right. Well, now how
are you? Ivanilic feels that the doctor would like to say, well,
how are our affairs, but that even he feels that

(01:44:38):
this would not do, and says instead, what sort of
a night have you had? Ivanilic looks at him as
much as to say, are you really never ashamed of lying?
But the doctor does not wish to understand this question,
and Ivanilic says, just as terrible as ever, the pain
never leaves me and never subsides, if only something yes,

(01:45:03):
you sick. People are always like that. There Now I
think I am warm enough. Even Prascovia Fedorovna, who is
so particular, could find no fault with my temperature. Well,
now I can say good morning, and the doctor presses
his patient's hand. Then, dropping his former playfulness, he begins

(01:45:23):
with a most serious face to examine the patient, feeling
his pulse and taking his temperature, and then begins the
sounding and ouscultation. Ivanilic knows quite well and definitely that
all this is nonsense and pure deception. But when the doctor,
getting down on his knee, leans over him, putting his
ear first higher than lower, and performs various gymnastic movements

(01:45:45):
over him with a significant expression on his face, Ivanilic
submits to it all, as he used to submit to
the speeches of the lawyers, though he knew very well
that they were all lying and why they were lying.
The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, is still sounding him
when Rascovia feeda Rodna's silk dress rustles at the door,
and she has heard scolding Peter for not having let

(01:46:05):
her know of the doctor's arrival. She comes in, kisses
her husband, and at once proceeds to prove that she
has been up a long time already, and only owing
to a misunderstanding, failed to be there when the doctor arrived.
Ivanillik looks at her, scans her all over, sets against her.
The whiteness and plumpness and cleanness of her hands and neck,

(01:46:26):
the gloss of her hair, and the sparkle of her
vivacious eyes. He hates her with his whole soul, and
the thrill of hatred he feels for her makes him
suffer from her touch. Her attitude towards him and his
diseases is still the same. Just as the doctor had
adopted a certain relation to his patient which he could

(01:46:46):
not abandon, so had she formed one towards him, that
he was not doing something he ought to do and
was himself to blame, and that she reproached him lovingly
for this, and she could not now change that attitude.
You see, he doesn't listen to me and doesn't take
his medicine at the proper time. And above all, he
lies in a position that is no doubt bad for him,

(01:47:08):
with his legs up. She described how he made Jerasim
hold his legs up. The doctor smiled with a contemptuous
affability that said, what's to be done. These sick people
do have foolish fancies of that kind, but we must
forgive them. When the examination was over, the doctor looked

(01:47:29):
at his watch, and then Prascovia Fiedorovna announced to Ivanilik
that it was, of course as he pleased, but she
had sent today for a celebrated specialist who would examine
him and have a consultation with Michael Danilavick, their regular doctor.
Please don't raise any objections. I am doing this for
my own sake, she said, ironically, letting it be felt

(01:47:50):
that she was doing it all for his sake, and
only said this to leave him no right to refuse.
He remains silent, knitting his brows, felt that he was
surrounded and involved in a mesh of falsity, that it
was hard to unravel anything. Everything she did for him
was entirely for her own sake, and she told him
she was doing for herself what she actually was doing

(01:48:12):
for herself, as if that was so incredible that he
must understand the opposite. At half past eleven, the celebrated
specialist arrived again. The sounding began, and the significant conversations
in his presence and in another room about the kidneys
and the appendix, and the questions and answers, with such
an air of importance, that again, instead of the real

(01:48:35):
question of life and death, which now alone confronted him,
the question arose of the kidney and appendix, which were
not behaving as they ought to, and would now be
attached by Michael Danny Levick and the specialist and forced
to amend their ways. The celebrated specialist took leave of
him with a serious, though not hopeless look, and in
reply to the timid question Ivanillik, with ice glistening with

(01:48:56):
fear and hope, put to him as to whether there
was a chance of recovery, said that he could not
vouch for it, but there was a possibility. The look
of hope with which Ivanilik watched the doctor rout was
so pathetic that Prascovia Fedorovna, seeing it, even wept as
she left the room to hand the doctor's fee. The
gleam of hope kindled by the doctor's encouragement did not

(01:49:18):
last long. The same room, the same pictures, curtains, wallpaper,
medicine bottles were all there, and the same aching, suffering body,
and Ivanilic began to moan. They gave him a subcutaneous injection,
and he sank into oblivion. It was twilight when he
came to. They brought him his dinner, and he swallowed

(01:49:39):
some beef tea with difficulty, and then everything was the
same again, and night was coming on. After dinner, at
seven o'clock, Prascovia Fedorovna came into the room an evening dress,
her full bosom pushed up by her corset and with
traces of powder on her face. She had reminded him
in the morning that they were going to the theater.

(01:50:01):
Sarah Bernhard was visiting the town, and they had a box,
which he had insisted on their taking. Now he had
forgotten about it, and her toilet offended him, but he
concealed his vexation when he remembered that he had himself
insisted on their securing a box and going because it
would be an instructive and esthetic pleasure. For the children.
Prascovia Fedorovny came in, self satisfied, but yet with a

(01:50:24):
rather guilty air. She sat down and asked how he was,
but as he saw, only for the sake of asking him,
not in order to learn about it, knowing that there
was nothing to learn, and then went on to what
she really wanted to say, that she would not, on
any account have gone, but that the box had been taken,
and Helen and their daughter were going, as well as Petrushev,
the examining magistrate, their daughter's fiance, and that it was

(01:50:47):
out of the question to let them go alone, but
that she would have much preferred to sit with him
for a while, and he must be sure to follow
the doctor's orders while she was away. Oh, and Fedora Petrovitch,
the fiancee, would like to come in. May he and
Lisa all right? Their daughter came in in full evening dress,

(01:51:11):
her fresh, young flesh exposed, making a show of that
very flesh which in his own case caused so much suffering, strong, healthy,
evidently in love and impatient with illness, suffering and death
because they interfered with her happiness. But door Petrovitch came
in too, in evening dress, his hair curled a la kapul,
a tight stiff collar round his long, sinewy neck, an

(01:51:34):
enormous white shirt front in narrow black trousers tightly stretched
over his strong thighs. He had one white glove tightly
drawn on, and was holding his opera hat in his hand.
Following him, the schoolboy crept in, unnoticed, in a new uniform,
poor little fellow, and wearing gloves. Terribly dark shadows showed

(01:51:54):
under his eyes, the meaning of which ivan Ilik knew well.
His son had always seemed pathetic to him, and now
it was dreadful to see the boy's frightened look of pity.
It seemed to Ivanilic that Vagia was the only one
besides Jerasine who understood and pitted him. They all sat
down and again asked how he was. A silence followed.

(01:52:18):
Lisa asked her mother about the opera glasses, and there
was an altercation between mother and daughter as to who
had taken them and where they had been put. This
occasion some unpleasantness, but dor Petrovitch inquired of Ivanilick whether
he had ever seen Sarah Bernhard. Ivanilik did not at
first catch the question but then replied, no, have you

(01:52:41):
seen her before? Yes. In adrian lecuver Prascovia, Fedorovna mentioned
some roles in which Sarah Bernhard was particularly good. Her
daughter disagreed. Conversation sprang up as to the elegance and
realism of her acting the sort of conversation that is
always repeated and is always the same. In the midst

(01:53:05):
of the conversation, Fidor Petrovitch glanced at ivan Ilik and
became silent. The others also looked at him and grew silent.
Ivanilik was staring with glittering eyes straight before him, evidently
indignant with them. This had to be rectified, but it
was impossible to do so. The silence had to be broken.

(01:53:26):
But for a time no one dared to break it,
and they all became afraid that the conventional deception would
suddenly become obvious and the truth become plain to all.
Lisa was the first to pluck up courage and break
that silence, but by trying to hide what everybody was feeling,
she betrayed it. Well, if we are going, it's time
to start, she said, looking at her watch, a present

(01:53:48):
from her father, and with a faint and significant smile
at Fodor Petrovitch, relating to something known only to them.
She got up with a rustle of her dress. They
all rose, said good night, and went away. When they
had gone, it seemed to Ivanillick that he felt better.
The falsity had gone with them, But the pain remained,

(01:54:09):
that same pain and that same fear that made everything
monotonously alike, nothing harder and nothing easier. Everything was worse again.
Minute followed minute, an hour followed hour. Everything remained the same,
and there was no cessation, and the inevitable end of
it all became more and more terrible. Yes, send Jerosm here,

(01:54:33):
he replied to a question Peter asked. Chapter nine. His
wife returned late at night. She came in on tiptoe,
but he heard her, opened his eyes and made haste
to close them again. She wished to send Jerosem away
and to sit with him herself, but he opened his
eyes and said, no, go away. Are you in great pain?

(01:54:58):
Always the same, Take some opium. He agreed, and took some.
She went away till about three in the morning. He
was in a state of stupefied misery. It seemed to
him that he and his pain were being thrust into
a narrow, deep, black sack. But though they were pushed

(01:55:18):
further and further, and they could not be pushed to
the bottom. And this terrible enough in itself, was accompanied
by suffering. He was frightened, yet wanted to fall through
the sack. He struggled, but yet co operated, and suddenly
he broke through, fell and regained consciousness. Jerosine was sitting

(01:55:39):
at the foot of the bed, dozing quietly and patiently,
while he himself lay with his emaciated stocking legs resting
on Jerosine's shoulders. The same shaded candle was there in
the same unceasing pain. Go away, Jeroseim, he whispered, It's
all right, sir, I'll stay awhile, no go away. He

(01:56:03):
removed his legs from Jerosine's shoulders, turned sideways onto his arm,
and felt sorry for himself. He only waited till Jerasine
had gone into the next room, and then restrained himself
no longer, but wept like a child. He wept on
account of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man,
the cruelty of God, and the absence of God. Why

(01:56:26):
hast thou done all this? Why hast thou brought me here?
Why why dost thou torment me so terribly? He did
not expect an answer, and yet wept because there was
no answer and could be none. The pain again grew
more acute, but he did not stir and did not call.
He said to himself, go on, strike me, But what

(01:56:51):
is it for? What have I done to thee? What
is it for? Then he grew quiet, and not only
sees weeping, but even held his breath, and became all attention.
It was as though he were listening not to an
audible voice, but to the voice of his soul, to
the current of thoughts arising within him. What is it

(01:57:12):
you want? Was the first clear conception capable of expression
in words that he heard. What do you want? What
do you want? He repeated to himself. What do I want?
To live? And not to suffer? He answered, And again
he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain

(01:57:34):
did not distract him. To live, how asked his inner voice.
Why to live as I used to well and pleasantly
as you lived before well and pleasantly, the voice repeated,
and in imagination he began to recall the best moments
of his pleasant life. But strange to say, none of

(01:57:57):
those best moments of his pleasant life now seem at
all what they had then seen, none of them except
the first recollections of childhood. There in childhood there had
been something really pleasant with which it would be possible
to live if it could return. But the child who
had experienced that happiness existed no longer. It was like
a reminiscence of somebody else. As soon as the period

(01:58:20):
began which had produced the present ivan elic all that
had then seen joys now melted before his sight and
turned into something trivial and often nasty. And the further
he departed from childhood, and the nearer he came to
the present, the more worthless and doubtful were the joys.
This began with the school of law, A little that

(01:58:40):
was really good was still found. There. There was light heartedness, friendship,
and hope. But in the upper classes there had already
been fewer of such good moments. Then, during the first
years of his official career, when he was in the
service of the Governor, some pleasant moments again occurred. They
were the memories of love for a woman then all

(01:59:01):
became confused, and there was still less of what was good.
Later on again there was still less that was good.
And the further he went, the less there was. His
marriage a mere accident, than the disenchantment that followed it,
his wife's bad breath, and the sensuality and hypocrisy. Then
that deadly official life in those preoccupations about money, a
year of it, and two and ten and twenty, and

(01:59:24):
always the same thing, And the longer it lasted, the
more deadly it became. It is as if I had
been going downhill while I imagined I was going up,
And that is really what it was. I was going
up in public opinion, but to the same extent, life
was ebbing away from me. And now it is all

(01:59:45):
done and there is only death. Then what does it mean?
Why it can't be that life is so senseless and horrible.
But if it really has been so horrible and senseless,
why must I die and die? There is something wrong.
Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,

(02:00:06):
It suddenly occurred to him. But how could that be
when I did everything properly, he replied, and immediately dismissed
from his mind. This the sole solution of all the
riddles of life and death as something quite impossible? Then
what do you want now to live? Live? How live

(02:00:27):
as you lived in the law courts? When the usher proclaimed,
the judge is coming. The judge is coming. The judge,
he repeated to himself. Here he is the judge. But
I am not guilty, he exclaimed angrily. What is it for?
And he ceased crying, but, turning his face to the wall,

(02:00:47):
continued to ponder on the same question, why and for
what purpose is there all this horror? But however much
he pondered, he found no answer. And whenever the thought
occurred to him, as it often did, that it all
resulted from his not having lived as he ought to
have done, he at once recalled the correctness of his
whole life and dismissed so strange an idea. Chapter ten,

(02:01:12):
another fortnight passed. Ivanillic now no longer left his sofa.
He would not lie in bed, but lay on the
sofa facing the wall. Nearly all the time he suffered,
ever the same unceasing agonies, and in his loneliness, pondered
always on the same insoluble question, what is this? Can
it be that it is death? And the inner voice answered, yes,

(02:01:36):
it is death. Why these sufferings, and the voice answered,
for no reason, they just are so beyond And besides this,
there was nothing. From the very beginning of his illness.
Ever since he had first been to see the doctor,
Ivanilica's life had been divided between two contrary and alternating moods.

(02:01:57):
Now it was despair in the expectation of this un
comprehended in terrible death, and now hope in an intensely
interested observation of the functioning of his organs. Now before
his eyes there was only a kidney or an intestine
that temporarily evaded its duty, And now only that incomprehensible
and dreadful death, from which it was impossible to escape.

(02:02:18):
These two states of mind had alternated from the very
beginning of his illness, But the further it progressed, the
more doubtful and fantastic became the conception of the kidney,
and the more real the sense of impending death. He
had but to call to mind what he had been
three months before, and what he was now to call
to mind with what regularity he had been going downhill,

(02:02:39):
for every possibility of hope to be shattered latterly during
the loneliness in which he found himself as he lay
facing the back of the sofa, a loneliness in the
midst of a populous town, and surrounded by numerous acquaintances
and relations, but that yet could not have been more
complete anywhere, either at the bottom of the sea or
under the earth. During that terrible loneliness, I Vanilla had

(02:03:00):
lived only in memories of the past. Pictures of his
past rose before him one after another. They always began
with what was nearest in time, and then went back
to what was most remote to his childhood, and rested there.
If he thought of the stewed prunes that had been
offered him that day, his mind went back to the raw,
shriveled French plums of his childhood, their peculiar flavor in

(02:03:22):
the flow of saliva when he sucked their stones, and
along with the memory of that taste came a whole
series of memories of those days, his nurse, his brother,
and their toys. Now I mustn't think of that, it
is too painful, Ivanillic said to himself, and brought himself
back to the present, to the button on the back

(02:03:43):
of the sofa, and the creases in its Morocco. Morocco
was expensive, but it does not wear well. There had
been a quarrel about it. It was a different kind
of quarrel, and a different kind of Morocco. The time
when we tore father's portfolio and were punished, and Mama
brought us some tar. And again his thoughts dwelt on
his childhood, and again it was painful, and he tried

(02:04:04):
to banish them and fix his mind on something else.
Then again, together with that chain of memories and other
series passed through his mind of how his illness had
progressed and grown worse. There also, the further back he looked,
the more life there had been. There had been more
of what was good in life, and more of life itself.

(02:04:24):
The two merged together. Just as the pain went on
getting worse and worse, so my life grew worse and worse.
He thought. There is one bright spot there at the back,
at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker
and blacker, and proceeds more and more rapidly. In inverse
ration to the square of the distance from death, thought Ivanilik,

(02:04:46):
and the example of a stone falling downwards with increasing
velocity entered his mind. Life, a series of increasing sufferings,
flies further and further towards its end. The most terrible
suffering I am flowing. He shuddered, shifted himself, and tried
to resist, but was already aware that resistance was impossible.

(02:05:06):
And again, with eyes weary of gazing but unable to
see seeing what was before them, he stared at the
back of the sofa and waited, awaiting the dreadful fall
and shockun destruction. Resistance is impossible, he said to himself,
if I could only understand what it is all for,
But that too is impossible. An explanation would be possible

(02:05:29):
if it could be said that I have not lived
as I ought to. But it is impossible to say that.
And he remembered all the legality corrected to it and
propriety of his life that at any rate can certainly
not be admitted, he thought, and his lips smiled ironically,
as if someone could see that smile and be taken
in by it. There is no explanation agony death what

(02:05:54):
four chapter eleven. Another two weeks when by in this
way and during that fortnight and even occurred that ivan
Ilik and his wife had desired Petrushev formally proposed. It
happened in the evening the next day. Prascovia Fodorovna came
into her husband's room, considering how best to inform him

(02:06:17):
of it. But that very night there had been a
fresh change for the worse in his condition. She found
him still lying on the sofa, but in a different position.
He lay on his back, groaning and staring fixedly straight
in front of him. She began to remind him of
his medicines, but he turned his eyes towards her with
such a look that she did not finish what she

(02:06:38):
was saying. So great an animosity to her in particular,
did that look express for Christ's sake? Let me die
in peace? He said. She would have gone away, but
just then their daughter came in and went up to
say good morning. He looked at her as he had
done at his wife, and in reply to her inquiry
about his health, said dryly that he would soon free

(02:07:00):
them all of himself. They were both silent, and after
sitting with him for a while, went away. Is it
our fault, Lisa said to her mother. It's as if
we were to blame. I am sorry for Papa, But
why should we be tortured? The doctor came at his

(02:07:20):
usual time. Ivanilic answered yes and no, never taking his
angry eyes from him, and at last said, you know
you can do nothing for me, so leave me alone.
We can ease your sufferings. You can't even do that.
Let me be. The doctor went into the drawing room
and told Prascovia Fiedorovna that the case was very serious

(02:07:44):
and that the only resource left was opium to allay
her husband's sufferings, which must be terrible. It was true,
as the doctor said that Ivanilica's physical sufferings were terrible,
But worse than the physical sufferings were his mental sufferings,
which were his chief torture. His mental sufferings were due
to the fact that that night, as he looked at

(02:08:05):
jerasne sleepy, good natured face with its prominent cheek bones,
the question suddenly occurred to him, what if my whole
life has been wrong? It occurred to him that what
had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not
spent his life as he should have done, might after
all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely
perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by

(02:08:28):
the most highly placed people. Those scarcely noticeable impulses which
he had immediately suppressed might have been the real thing,
and all the rest false, and his professional duties in
the whole arrangement of his life and of his family,
and all his social and official interests might all have
been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself,

(02:08:49):
and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending.
There was nothing to defend. But if that is so,
he said to himself, and I am leaving this life
with the consciousness that I have lost all that was
given me, and it is impossible to rectify it. What
Then he lay on his back and began to pass
his life and review in quite a new way. In

(02:09:11):
the morning, when he saw first his footman, then his wife,
then his daughter, and then the doctor, their every word
and movement confirmed to him the awful truth that had
been revealed to him during the night. In them, he
saw himself all that for which he had lived, and
saw clearly that it was not real at all, but
a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life
and death. This consciousness intensified his physical suffering tenfold. He

(02:09:37):
groaned and tossed about and pulled at his clothing, which
choked and stifled him, and he hated them on that account.
He was given a large dose of opium and became unconscious,
but at noon his sufferings began again. He drove everybody
away and tossed from side to side. His wife came

(02:09:57):
to him and said, Jean, my dear, do this for me.
It can't do any harm and often helps healthy people,
often do it. He opened his eyes wide, What take communion?
Why it's unnecessary? However, she began to cry, Yes, do,

(02:10:25):
my dear. I'll send for our priest. He is such
a nice man, all right, very well, he muttered. When
the priest came and heard his confession, Ivanillik was softened
and seemed to feel a relief from his doubts and
consequently from his sufferings, and for a moment there came

(02:10:45):
a ray of hope. He again began to think of
the vermiform appendix and the possibility of correcting it. He
received the sacrament with tears in his eyes. When they
laid him down again, afterwards, he felt a moment and
the hope that he might live awoke in him again.
He began to think of the operation that had been

(02:11:06):
suggested to him to live. I want to live, he
said to himself. His wife came in to congratulate him
after his communion, and when uttering the usual conventional words,
she added, you feel better, don't you. Without looking at her,
he said yes. Her dress, her figure, the expression of

(02:11:30):
her face, the tone of her voice all revealed the
same thing. This is wrong. It is not as it
should be. All you have lived for and still lived
for his falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from you.
And as soon as he admitted that thought, his hatred
and his agonizing physical suffering again sprang up, and with

(02:11:50):
that suffering a consciousness of the unavoidable approaching end. And
to this was added a new sensation of grinding, shooting
pain and a feeling of suffocation. The expression of his
face when he uttered that yes, was dreadful. Having uttered it,
he looked her straight in the eyes, turned on his
face with a rapidity extraordinary in his weak state, and shouted,

(02:12:14):
go away, go away, and leave me alone. Chapter twelve.
From that moment, the screaming began that continued for three days,
and was so terrible that one could not hear it
through two closed doors without horror. At the moment he
answered his wife, realized that he was lost, that there
was no return, that the end had come, the very end,

(02:12:37):
and his doubts were still unsolved and remained doubts. Oh oh, oh,
he cried in various intonations. He had begun by screaming
I won't and continued screaming on the letter oh for
three whole days, during which time did not exist for him.
He struggled in that black sack into which he was

(02:12:59):
being thrust by an invisible, resistless force. He struggled as
a man condemned to death, struggles in the hands of
the executioner, knowing that he cannot save himself, and every
moment he felt that despite all his efforts, he was
drawing nearer and nearer to what terrified him. He felt
that his agony was due to his being thrust into

(02:13:19):
that black hole, and still more to his not being
able to get right into it. He was hindered from
getting into it by his conviction that his life had
been a good one, That very justification of his life
held him fast and prevented his moving forward, and it
caused him most torment of all. Suddenly, some force struck
him in the chest inside, making it still harder to breathe,

(02:13:43):
and he fell through the hole, and there at the
bottom was a light. What had happened to him was
like the sensation one sometimes experiences in a railway carriage
when one thinks one is going backwards while one is
really going forwards, and suddenly becomes aware of the real direction. Yes,
it was not the right thing, he said to himself,
but that's no matter. It can be done. But what

(02:14:07):
is the right thing? He asked himself, and suddenly grew quiet.
This occurred at the end of the third day, two
hours before his death. Just then, his schoolboy son had
crept softly in and gone up to the bedside. The
dying man was still screaming desperately and waving his arms.

(02:14:27):
His hand fell on the boy's head, and the boy
caught it, pressed it to his lips and began to cry.
At that very moment, Ivanillik fell through and caught sight
of the light, and it was revealed to him that
though his life had not been what it should have been,
this could still be rectified. He asked himself what is
the right thing, and grew still listening. Then he felt

(02:14:50):
that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes,
looked at his son and felt sorry for him. His
wife camp up to him, and he glanced at her.
She was gazing at him, open mouthed, with undried tears
on her nose and cheek, and a despairing look on
her face. He felt sorry for her too. Yes, I

(02:15:12):
am making them wretched, he thought. They are sorry, but
it will be better for them when I die. He
wished to say this, but had not the strength to
water it. Besides, why speak, I must act, he thought.
With a look at his wife, he indicated his son
and said, take him away, Sorry for him, Sorry for

(02:15:33):
you too. He tried to add forgive me, but said
forego and waved his hand, knowing that he whose understanding
mattered would understand. And suddenly it grew clear to him
that what had been oppressing him and would not leave
his was all dropping away at once, from two sides,
from ten sides, and from all sides. He was sorry
for them. He must act so as not to hurt them,

(02:15:55):
release them, and free himself from these sufferings. How good
and how simple? He thought, And the pain, he asked himself,
what has become of it? Where are you pain? He
turned his attention to it. Yes, here it is well,

(02:16:16):
what of it? Let the pain be? And death? Where
is it? He sought his former accustomed fear of death
and did not find it. Where is it? What death?
There was no fear, because there was no death. In
place of death, there was light. So that's what it is.

(02:16:39):
He suddenly exclaimed aloud, What joy to him? All this
happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that
instant did not change for those present. His agony continued
for another two hours. Something rattled in his throat. His
emaciated body twitched. Then the gasping and rattle became less

(02:16:59):
and less frequent. It is finished, said someone near him.
He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.
Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more.
He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of
a sigh, stretched out, and died finess about the author.

(02:17:25):
Leo Tolstoy eighteen twenty eight to nineteen ten was a
Russian novelist, thinker, and moral philosopher whose works rank among
the greatest achievements of world literature. Born into an aristocratic family,
he gained early recognition with his Sevastible Sketches eighteen fifty five,
vivid accounts of war drawn from his service in the

(02:17:46):
Crimean Conflict. Tolstoy's reputation was cemented by his monumental novels
War in Peace eighteen sixty nine and Anakarinina eighteen seventy seven,
which combined sweeping historical vision with penetrating sis psychological insight.
In the eighteen eighties, however, Tolstoy experienced a profound spiritual

(02:18:06):
crisis that transformed his life in writing, he rejected material
wealth and social privilege, embracing a philosophy of simplicity, moral responsibility,
and nonviolence. It was during this period that Tolstoy wrote
The Death of Ivan Iliach, a work that distilled his
moral vision into an unflinching yet deeply humane reflection on mortality.

(02:18:29):
His later religious and ethical writings influenced global figures such
as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior. Tolstoy's legacy
endures not only in his epic novels, but also in
works like the Death of ivan Iliitch, which continued to
challenge readers to consider what it truly means to live
and to die with integrity. Pigon Publishing House presented the

(02:18:54):
Death of ivan Iliitch author Leo Tolstoy. Thank you for
listening to this audio book. We hope you enjoyed it.

(02:19:16):
If you enjoyed this classic, follow the show and leave
a quick review, and join us every Tuesday and Thursday
for more timeless stories.

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