Apart from this lie, or owing to it, the most tormenting thing for Ivan Ilyich was that no one pitied him as he wanted to be pitied: there were moments, after prolonged suffering, when Ivan Ilyich wanted most of all, however embarrassed he would have been to admit it, to be pitied by someone like a sick child. He wanted to be caressed, kissed, wept over, as children are caressed and comforted. He knew that he was an important judge, that he had a graying beard, and that therefore it was impossible; but he wanted it all the same. And in his relations with Gerasim there was something close to it, and therefore his relations with Gerasim comforted him. Ivan Ilyich wanted to weep, wanted to be caressed and wept over, and then comes his colleague, the judge Shebek, and instead of weeping and caressing, Ivan Ilyich makes a serious, stern, profoundly thoughtful face and, by inertia, gives his opinion on the significance of a decision of the appeals court and stubbornly insists on it. This lie around and within him poisoned most of all the last days of Ivan Ilyich’s life.
VIII
IT WAS MORNING. It was morning if only because Gerasim had gone and the servant Pyotr had come, put out the candles, drawn one curtain, and quietly begun tidying up. Whether it was morning or evening, Friday or Sunday, was all the same, all one and the same: a gnawing, tormenting pain, never subsiding for a moment; the awareness of life ever hopelessly going but never quite gone; always the same dreadful, hateful death approaching—the sole reality now—and always the same lie. What were days, weeks, and hours here?
“Would you care for tea, sir?”
“He needs order, so his masters should have tea in the mornings,” he thought, and said only:
“No.”
“Would you like to lie on the sofa?”
“He needs to tidy up the room, and I’m in his way, I am uncleanness, disorder,” he thought, and said only:
“No, let me be.”
The servant pottered around some more. Ivan Ilyich reached out his hand. Pyotr obligingly came over.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“My watch.”
Pyotr picked up the watch, which was lying just by his hand, and gave it to him.
“Half past eight. Are they up yet?”
“No, sir. Vassily Ivanovich” (that was the son) “has gone to school, and Praskovya Fyodorovna gave orders to wake her if you asked for her. Shall I do so?”
“No, don’t.” “Shouldn’t I try some tea?” he thought. “Yes … bring tea.”
Pyotr went to the door. Ivan Ilyich was afraid to be left alone. “How can I keep him? Ah, yes, my medicine.” “Pyotr, give me my medicine.” “Who knows, maybe the medicine will still help.” He took a spoonful and swallowed it. “No, it won’t help. It’s all nonsense, deception,” he decided as soon as he tasted the familiar sickly sweet and hopeless taste. “No, I can’t believe it any more. But the pain, why the pain? If only it would stop for a moment.” And he moaned. Pyotr turned back. “No, go. Bring the tea.”
Pyotr went out. Ivan Ilyich, left alone, moaned not so much from pain, terrible though it was, as from anguish. “Always the same, always the same, all these endless days and nights. Let it be sooner. What sooner? Death, darkness. No, no. Anything’s better than death!”
When Pyotr came in with the tea tray, Ivan Ilyich looked at him for a long time in perplexity, not understanding who and what he was. Pyotr became embarrassed under this gaze. And when Pyotr became embarrassed, Ivan Ilyich came to his senses.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “the tea … good, set it down. Only help me to wash and put on a clean shirt.”
And Ivan Ilyich began to wash. With pauses for rest, he washed his hands, his face, brushed his teeth, started combing his hair, and looked in the mirror. He became frightened; especially frightening was how his hair lay flat on his pale forehead.
While his shirt was being changed, he knew he would be still more frightened if he looked at his body, so he did not look at himself. But now it was all over. He put on his dressing gown, wrapped himself in a plaid, and sat down in the armchair to have tea. For a moment he felt refreshed, but as soon as he began to drink the tea, there was again the same taste, the same pain. He forced himself to finish it and lay down, stretching his legs. He lay down and dismissed Pyotr.
Always the same thing. A drop of hope glimmers, then a sea of despair begins to rage, and always the pain, always the pain, always the anguish, always one and the same thing. Being alone is a horrible anguish, he wants to call someone, but he knows beforehand that with others it is still worse. “At least morphine again—to become oblivious. I’ll tell him, the doctor, to think up something else. It’s impossible like this, impossible.”
An hour, two hours pass in this way. But now there’s a ringing in the front hall. Could be the doctor. Right, it’s the doctor, fresh, brisk, fat, cheerful, with an expression that says: So you’re scared of something here, but we’ll fix it all up for you in no time. The doctor knows that this expression is unsuitable here, but he has put it on once and for all and cannot take it off, like a man who puts on a tailcoat in the morning and goes around visiting.
The doctor rubs his hands briskly, comfortingly.
“I’m cold. It’s freezing outside. Let me warm up,” he says with such an expression as if they only had to wait a little till he warmed up, and when he warmed up, he would put everything right.
“Well, how …?”
Ivan Ilyich senses that the doctor would like to say “How’s every little thing?” but that he, too, senses that he cannot say that, and so he says: “How was your night?”
Ivan Ilyich looks at the doctor with a questioning expression: “Will you never be ashamed of lying?” But the doctor does not want to understand the question.
And Ivan Ilyich says:
“Terrible as ever. The pain doesn’t go away, doesn’t let up. If you could do something!”
“Ah, you sick people are always like that. Well, sir, now I seem to be warm; even the most exacting Praskovya Fyodorovna could make no objection to my temperature. Well, sir, greetings.” And the doctor shakes his hand.