VII
How it happened it is impossible to say because it came about
step by step, unnoticed, but in the third month of Ivan Ilych'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 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 were prepared for him by the doctors' 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.
But just through his most unpleasant matter, Ivan Ilych
obtained comfort. Gerasim, the butler's young assistant, always
came in to carry the things out. Gerasim 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, engaged on that disgusting task embarrassed Ivan Ilych.
Once when he got up from the commode to weak to draw up his
trousers, he dropped into a soft armchair and looked with horror at
his bare, enfeebled thighs with the muscles so sharply marked on
them.
Gerasim with a firm light tread, his heavy boots emitting a
pleasant smell of tar and fresh winter air, came in wearing a clean
Hessian 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 commode.
"Gerasim!" said Ivan Ilych in a weak voice.
"Gerasim started, evidently afraid he might 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 Gerasim's eyes beamed and he showed his
glistening white teeth, "what's a little trouble? It's a case of
illness with you, sir."
And his deft strong hands did their accustomed task, and he
went out of the room stepping lightly. Five minutes later he as
lightly returned.
Ivan Ilych was still sitting in the same position in the
armchair.
"Gerasim," he said when the latter had replaced the freshly-
washed utensil. "Please come here and help me." Gerasim went up
to him. "Lift me up. It is hard for me to get up, and I have sent
Dmitri away."
Gerasim went up to him, grasped his master with his strong
arms deftly 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 Ivan Ilych asked to
be led to the sofa. Gerasim, 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 well you do it all!"
Gerasim smiled again and turned to leave the room. But Ivan
Ilych 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 when my feet are raised."
Gerasim brought the chair, set it down gently in place, and
raised Ivan Ilych's legs on it. It seemed to Ivan Ilych that he
felt better while Gerasim was holding up his legs.
"It's better when my legs are higher," he said. "Place that
cushion under them."
Gerasim did so. He again lifted the legs and placed them, and
again Ivan Ilych felt better while Gerasim held his legs. When he
set them down Ivan Ilych fancied he felt worse.
"Gerasim," he said. "Are you busy now?"
"Not at all, sir," said Gerasim, who had learnt from the
townsfolk how to 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 Gerasim raised his master's
legs higher and Ivan Ilych thought that in 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."
Ivan Ilych told Gerasim 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 Gerasim held his legs up.
After that Ivan Ilych would sometimes call Gerasim and get him
to hold his legs on his shoulders, and he liked talking to him.
Gerasim did it all easily, willingly, simply, and with a good
nature that touched Ivan Ilych. Health, strength, and vitality in
other people were offensive to him, but Gerasim's strength and
vitality did not mortify but soothed him.
What tormented Ivan Ilych 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 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, solemn act to the level of their visitings,
their curtains, their sturgeon for dinner -- were a terrible agony
for Ivan Ilych. And strangely enough, many times when they were
going through their antics over him he had been within a
hairbreadth 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 to the level of
a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone
entered a drawing room defusing 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 Gerasim recognized it and pitied him.
And so Ivan Ilych felt at ease only with him. He felt comforted
when Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all night long) and
refused to go to bed, saying: "Don't you worry, Ivan Ilych. 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 should I grudge a little trouble?" Gerasim 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 Ivan Ilych was sending him away he even said straight out:
"We shall all of us die, so why should I 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 lying, or because of it, what most tormented
Ivan Ilych was that no one pitied him as he wished to be pitied.
At certain moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all
(though he would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to
pity him as a sick child is pitied. He longed to be petted and
comforted. he knew he was an important functionary, that he had a
beard turning grey, and that therefore what he long for was
impossible, but still he longed for it. and in Gerasim's attitude
towards him there was something akin to what he wished for, and so
that attitude comforted him. Ivan Ilych wanted to weep, wanted to
be petted and cried over, and then his colleague Shebek would come,
and instead of weeping and being petted, Ivan Ilych 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 on that view. This falsity around him and
within him did more than anything else to poison his last days.
Part 6, Part 8