The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Tolstoy Leo & Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky

Author:Tolstoy, Leo & Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky [Tolstoy, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2009-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

VII

NIKITA, ever since he sat down, covered with sacking, behind the rear of the sleigh, had been sitting motionlessly. He, like all people who live with nature and know want, was patient and could wait calmly for hours, even days, without feeling either alarm or vexation. He heard the master call him but did not reply, because he did not want to move and reply. Though he was still warm from the tea he had drunk, and because he had moved a lot, floundering through the snowdrifts, he knew that this warmth would not last long, and that he would no longer be able to warm himself by moving, because he felt as tired as a horse feels when it stops and cannot go further, despite any whipping, and the master sees that he must feed it so that it will be able to work again. One of his feet, in the torn boot, was cold, and he could no longer feel the big toe. And, besides that, his whole body was growing colder and colder. The thought that he could, and even in all probability would, die that night occurred to him, but this thought seemed neither especially unpleasant nor especially frightening to him. This thought did not seem especially unpleasant to him, because his whole life was not a continuous feast, but, on the contrary, a ceaseless servitude, which was beginning to weary him. And this thought was not especially frightening to him, because, besides masters like Vassily Andreich whom he had served here, he always felt himself dependent in this life on the chief master, the one who had sent him into this life, and he knew that, on dying, he would remain in the power of that same master, and that that master would not mistreat him. “It’s a pity to abandon the accustomed, the usual? Well, no help for it, you’ll have to get used to the new.”

“Sins?” he thought and remembered his drunkenness, the drunk-up money, the mistreatment of his wife, the swearing, not going to church, not keeping the fasts, and all that the priest reprimanded him for at confession. “Sins, sure. But did I visit them on myself? It’s clear God made me this way. Well, sins then! No getting away from them!”

So he thought at first about what might happen to him that night, and then he no longer went back to those thoughts, but gave himself to reflections that came to him of themselves. Now he remembered Marfa’s visit, and the workers’ drunkenness, and his refusal to drink, then the present journey and Taras’s cottage, and the conversation about dividing up, then about his lad, and about Mukhorty, who would now get warm under the horse-cloth, then about his master, who made the sleigh creak turning over in it. “I don’t suppose the dear heart’s glad he went either. The kind of life he’s got, you don’t want to die. Not so the likes of us.” And all these recollections began to overlap and mix up in his head, and he fell asleep.

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