The death of ivan ilyich: and, master and man by Léon Tolstoï & Ann Slater

Author:Léon Tolstoï & Ann Slater [Tolstoï, Léon & Slater, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roman
ISBN: 9780679642930
Published: 2003-09-30T17:43:17+00:00

9

His wife returned late that night. She came in on tiptoe, but he heard her, opened his eyes, and hastily shut them again. She wanted to send Gerasim out and sit with him herself. He opened his eyes and said, “No. Go.”

“Are you suffering a lot?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Take some opium.”

He consented and drank it. She went away.

He was in an oppressive state of unconsciousness till three in the morning. It seemed to him that he and his pain were being painfully pushed into a long, narrow black sack, pushed in deeper and deeper, and yet could not be pushed right through. And this terrible business is agonizing for him. He is both afraid, and wants to fall through; he struggles against it, and he tries to help. And suddenly he tore free, and fell, and came to himself. There is Gerasim, sitting as usual at the foot of the bed, dozing peacefully and patiently. And there he is, lying with his emaciated, stockinged feet resting on Gerasim’s shoulders; there is the same shaded candle, and the same interminable pain.

“Go away, Gerasim,” he whispered.

“It doesn’t matter; I’ll sit awhile.”

“No, do go.”

He drew his legs down, lay sideways on his arm, and felt sorry for himself. He waited till Gerasim went next door, abandoned all restraint, and cried like a child. He was crying for his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, people’s cruelty, God’s cruelty, the absence of God.

Why have You done all this? Why did You bring me here? What have I done that You torment me so dreadfully?

He did not even expect an answer, and cried because there was no answer, and could be no answer. The pain rose up again, but he did not stir and did not call out. He said to himself, Go on, batter me! But what for? What have I done to You? What is it for?

Then he grew quiet, stopped crying and even breathing, and grew all attention, as though he were listening not to a voice speaking in sounds but the voice of his soul, the train of thoughts rising inside him.

“What do you want?” was the first clear notion he heard which could be put into words. What do you want? What do you need? he repeated to himself. What? “Not to suffer. To live,” he replied.

And again he gave himself over to such tense attention that even his pain did not distract him.

“Live? Live how?” asked the voice of his soul.

“Yes, live like I did before; well, and pleasantly.”

“Like you lived before, well, and pleasantly?” asked the voice. And in his imagination he began going over the best moments of his pleasant life. But—how strange—all those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed quite different from what they had then seemed. Everything, except the first memories of his childhood. There, in his childhood, was something really pleasant that you could live with, if it were to come again. But the person who had experienced that happy time was no more: it was like a memory of another person.

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