“Oh! Ohh! Oh!” he howled in various intonations. He began by howling, “I won’t!” and so went on howling on the letter O.
For all three days, in the course of which there was no time for him, he was thrashing about in that black sack into which an invisible, invincible force was pushing him. He struggled as one condemned to death struggles in the executioner’s hands, knowing he cannot save himself; and with every moment he felt that, despite all his efforts to struggle, he was coming closer and closer to what terrified him. He felt that his torment lay in being thrust into that black hole, and still more in being unable to get into it. What kept him from getting into it was the claim that his had been a good life. This justification of his life clutched at him, would not let him move forward, and tormented him most of all.
Suddenly some force shoved him in the chest, in the side, choked his breath still more, he fell through the hole, and there, at the end of the hole, something lit up. What was done to him was like what happens on the train, when you think you are moving forward, but are moving backward, and suddenly find out the real direction.
“Yes, it was all not right,” he said to himself, “but never mind. I can, I can do ‘right.’ But what is ‘right’?” he asked himself and suddenly grew still.
This was at the end of the third day, an hour before his death. Just then the little schoolboy quietly stole into his father’s room and went up to his bed. The dying man went on howling desperately and thrashing his arms about. His hand landed on the boy’s head. The boy seized it, pressed it to his lips, and wept.
Just then Ivan Ilyich fell through, saw light, and it was revealed to him that his life had not been what it ought, but that it could still be rectified. He asked himself what was “right,” and grew still, listening. Here he felt that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes and looked at his son. He felt sorry for him. His wife came over to him. He looked at her. She was gazing at him with a despairing expression, openmouthed, and with unwiped tears on her nose and cheek. He felt sorry for her.
“Yes, I’m tormenting them,” he thought. “They’re sorry, but it will be better for them when I die.” He wanted to say that, but was unable to bring it out. “Anyhow, why speak, I must act,” he thought. He indicated his son to his wife with his eyes and said:
“Take him away … sorry … for you, too …” He also wanted to say “Forgive,” but said “Forgo,” and, no longer able to correct himself, waved his hand, knowing that the one who had to would understand.
And suddenly it became clear to him that what was tormenting him and would not be resolved was suddenly all resolved at once, on two sides, on ten sides, on all sides. He was sorry for them, he had to act so that it was not painful for them. To deliver them and deliver himself from these sufferings. “How good and how simple,” he thought. “And the pain?” he asked himself. “What’s become of it? Where are you, pain?”
He became attentive.
“Yes, there it is. Well, then, let there be pain.
“And death? Where is it?”
He sought his old habitual fear of death and could not find it. Where was it? What death? There was no more fear because there was no more death.
Instead of death there was light.
“So that’s it!” he suddenly said aloud. “What joy!”
For him all this happened in an instant and the significance of that instant never changed. For those present, his agony went on for two more hours. Something gurgled in his chest; his emaciated body kept twitching. Then the gurgling and wheezing gradually subsided.
“It’s finished!” someone said over him.
He heard those words and repeated them in his soul. “Death is finished,” he said to himself. “It is no more.”
He drew in air, stopped at mid-breath, stretched out, and died.
1884–86
* The pride of the family.
* Look to the end.
† A pleasant fellow.
* Youth must have its day.
* On a whim.
* Establishment.
The Kreutzer Sonata
But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
MATTHEW 5:28 (RSV)
The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.” But he said to them, “Not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it.”
MATTHEW 19:10-12 (RSV)
I
IT WAS EARLY SPRING. We were traveling for the second day. Passengers going short distances entered and left the carriage, but three passengers, like myself, had been traveling from the very place of the train’s departure: an unattractive and no longer young lady, a smoker, with a worn-out face, in a coat of mannish cut and a hat; her acquaintance, a garrulous man of about forty, with neat new things; and another gentleman who kept himself apart, of medium height, with jerky movements, not yet old, but with obviously premature gray in his curly hair, and with unusually glittering eyes quickly darting from object to object. He was dressed in an old but expensively tailored coat with a lambskin collar and a tall lambskin hat. Under the coat, when he unbuttoned it, could be seen a jerkin and an embroidered Russian shirt. A peculiarity of this gentleman also consisted in the fact that he occasionally produced strange sounds, similar to a cough or laughter begun and broken off.
Throughout the trip, this gentleman carefully avoided communicating or becoming acquainted with the other passengers. To his neighbors’ attempts at conversation he responded briefly and curtly, and he either read, or smoked, looking out the window, or, taking provisions from his old bag, drank tea or ate a little something.
It seemed to me that he was weary of his solitude, and several times I was about to strike up a conversation with him, but each time our eyes met, which happened often, since we sat catercorner to each other, he turned away and took up a book or looked out the window.
During a stop, towards evening of the second day, at a large station, this nervous gentleman went to get some hot water and made tea for himself. The gentleman with neat new things, a lawyer, as I learned afterwards, and his neighbor, the smoking lady in the mannish coat, went to have tea at the station.
During the absence of the gentleman and lady, several new persons entered the carriage, among them a tall, clean-shaven, wrinkled old man, evidently a merchant, in a skunk-fur coat and a cloth cap with an enormous visor. The merchant sat down across from the places of the lady and the lawyer and at once got into conversation with a young man, a merchant’s clerk by the looks of him, who got into the carriage at the same station.
I was sitting catercorner to them and, as the train was not moving, I could hear snatches of their conversation when no one was passing by. The merchant began by saying that he was going to his estate, which was only one stop away; then, as usual, they got to talking first about prices, about trade, talked, as usual, about how trading was done in Moscow nowadays, then talked about the Nizhny Novgorod fair. The clerk started telling about how some rich merchant they both knew had been carousing at the fair, but the old man did not let him finish and himself started telling about the former carouses in Kunavin, which he himself had taken part in. He was obviously proud of having taken part in them, and with obvious delight told how he and that same acquaintance got drunk once in Kunavin and pulled such a stunt that it had to be told in a whisper, and the clerk guffawed for the whole carriage to hear, and the old man also laughed, baring two yellow teeth.