Before, when he was still sitting at home, in anguish, he had imagined a thousand times how he would enter his office. He was convinced, to his horror, that he was sure to hear ambiguous whispers behind his back, to see ambiguous faces, to reap the most malignant smiles. What was his amazement when none of it in fact happened. He was met deferentially; he was bowed to; everyone was serious; everyone was busy. Joy filled his heart as he made his way to his inner office.
He at once and most seriously got down to business, listened to some reports and explanations, made decisions. He felt he had never yet reasoned and decided so intelligently, so efficiently, as that morning. He saw that people were pleased with him, honored him, treated him with respect. The most ticklish insecurity would have been unable to notice anything. Business went splendidly.
Finally Akim Petrovich also appeared with some papers. At his appearance something as if stung Ivan Ilyich in his very heart, but only for an instant. He got busy with Akim Petrovich, talked gravely, showed him what needed to be done, and gave explanations. He noticed only that he as if avoided looking at Akim Petrovich for too long, or, better to say, that Akim Petrovich was afraid to look at him. But then Akim Petrovich was finished and began to gather up the papers.
“And here is another petition,” he began as dryly as he could, “from the clerk Pseldonymov, about his transfer to the———department. His Excellency Semyon Ivanovich Shipulenko has promised him a post. He asks your gracious assistance, Your Excellency.”
“Ah, so he’s transferring,” Ivan Ilyich said, and felt an enormous weight lift from his heart. He looked at Akim Petrovich, and at that moment their eyes met.
“Why, then I, for my part… I will employ,” Ivan Ilyich replied, “I am prepared.”
Akim Petrovich obviously wanted to slip away quickly. decided to speak himself out definitively. Apparently inspiration had come over him again.
“Tell him,” he began, directing a clear and profoundly meaningful look at Akim Petrovich, “tell Pseldonymov that I wish him no evil; no, I do not!… That, on the contrary, I am even ready to forget all the past, to forget all, all…”
But suddenly Ivan Ilyich stopped short, staring in amazement at the strange behavior of Akim Petrovich, who from a sensible man suddenly turned out, for some reason, to be a most terrible fool. Instead of listening and hearing him out, he suddenly blushed to the point of ultimate stupidity, began bowing somehow hastily and even indecently with some sort of little bows and at the same time backing toward the door. His whole look expressed a wish to fall through the floor, or, better to say, to get quickly back to his desk. Ivan Ilyich, left alone, rose from his chair in perplexity. He was looking into the mirror without noticing his own face.
“No, strictness, strictness, strictness alone!” he was whispering to himself almost unconsciously, and suddenly bright color poured all down his face. He suddenly felt so ashamed, so distressed, as he had not felt in the most unbearable moments of his eight-day illness. “I didn’t hold out!” he said to himself, and sank weakly into his chair.
THE ETERNAL HUSBAND
A STORY
I
VELCHANINOV
SUMMER CAME—and Velchaninov, beyond all expectation, stayed in Petersburg. His trip to the south of Russia fell through, and there was no end to his case in sight. This case—a lawsuit over an estate—was taking a most nasty turn. Three months earlier it had looked quite uncomplicated, all but indisputable; but everything had changed somehow suddenly. “And generally everything has begun to change for the worse!”—Velchaninov began repeating this phrase to himself gloatingly and frequently. He hired a clever, expensive, famous lawyer, and did not mind the cost; but in impatience and from insecurity he got to busying himself with the case as welclass="underline" read and wrote documents which the lawyer uniformly rejected, kept running around to various offices, made inquiries, and most likely hindered everything considerably; at least the lawyer complained and urged him to go to the country. But he could not even make up his mind to go to the country. The dust, the stuffiness, the white nights of Petersburg, which chafed his nerves—this was what he enjoyed in Petersburg. His apartment, recently rented, was somewhere near the Bolshoi Theater, and this, too, had not worked out; “nothing works out!” His hypochondria was increasing day by day; but he had long been inclined to hypochondria.
This was a man who had lived much and broadly, now far from young, about thirty-eight or even thirty-nine, and all this “old age”—as he himself put it—had come upon him “almost quite unexpectedly”; but he understood himself that he had aged not in the quantity, but rather, so to speak, in the quality of his years, and that if his infirmities had indeed begun, it was rather from within than from without. By the look of him, he still seemed a fine man. He was a tall and sturdy fellow, with thick, light brown hair and not a trace of gray on his head, and with a long brown beard almost halfway down his chest; as if somewhat clumsy and gone to seed at first sight, but, on closer inspection, you would at once discern in him a gentleman of excellent seasoning and who had once received a most high-society upbringing. Now, too, Velchaninov’s manners were free, bold, and even graceful, despite all his well-acquired peevishness and bagginess. And even to this day he was filled with the most unshakable, most impudent high-society self-confidence, the extent of which he perhaps did not suspect in himself, despite his being not only an intelligent, but sometimes even a sensible man, almost educated and unquestionably gifted. The color of his face, open and ruddy, had been distinguished in the old days by a feminine tenderness and had attracted the attention of women; now, too, someone would look at him and say: “There’s a hale fellow! Hale and hearty!” And yet this “hale fellow” was cruelly afflicted with hypochondria. His eyes, large and pale blue, also used to have much winsomeness in them ten years ago; they were such light, such merry and carefree eyes, that they inadvertently attracted everyone he came across. Now, nearing the age of forty, the brightness and kindness had almost died out in these eyes, already surrounded with light wrinkles; there appeared in them, on the contrary, the cynicism of a weary and not entirely moral man, cunning, mockery most often, and another new shade that had not been there before: a shade of sorrow and pain—a sort of distracted sorrow, as if without object, but intense. This sorrow was especially manifest when he was left alone. And, strangely, this man, so boisterous, merry, and carefree just two years ago, who was so good at telling such amusing stories—now liked nothing better than to be left entirely alone. He deliberately abandoned his numerous acquaintances, whom even now he might not have abandoned, despite the definitive disorder of his financial situation. True, vanity also helped here: with his insecurity and vanity it was impossible to endure former acquaintances. But his vanity, too, began gradually to change in isolation. It did not diminish—even quite the contrary; but it began to degenerate into some peculiar sort of vanity, which had not been there before; he began to suffer sometimes from entirely different causes than usual before—from unexpected causes, entirely unthinkable before, from “more higher” causes than previously—“if it can be put that way, if there actually are higher and lower causes…” That he added himself.
Yes, he did come to that as well; he was now struggling with some higher causes, of which he had not even stopped to think before. In his mind and according to his conscience, he called “higher” all those “causes” which (to his surprise) he was in no way able to laugh at in himself—something which had not happened till then—in himself, naturally; oh, in society it was a different matter! He knew perfectly well that the circumstances needed only to arise—and the next day he would quite calmly renounce, aloud, despite all the mysterious and reverential decisions of his conscience, all these “higher causes” and himself be the first to make fun of them, naturally without admitting anything. And this was indeed so, despite the certain, even quite considerable, share of independence of thought he had won lately from the “lower causes” that had hitherto possessed him. And how many times, getting out of bed in the morning, had he begun to be ashamed of the thoughts and feelings he had lived through during the night’s insomnia! (And of late he had been suffering constantly from insomnia.) He had long since noticed that he was becoming extremely insecure in all things, both important and trifling, and therefore he resolved to trust himself as little as possible. However, certain facts stood out which could in no way be acknowledged as actually existing. Of late, at night sometimes, his thoughts and sensations changed almost completely as compared with his usual ones and for the most part did not at all resemble those that fell to the first half of his day. He was struck by this—and even consulted a famous doctor, though, true, the man was his acquaintance; naturally, he brought it up jokingly. He received the response that the fact of a change and even a splitting of thoughts and sensations at night during insomnia, and at night generally—is a universal fact among people of “strong thoughts and strong feelings”—that the convictions of a whole lifetime would sometimes change all at once under the melancholy influence of night and insomnia; suddenly, out of the blue, the most fateful decisions would be taken; but that, of course, there is measure in all things—and if, finally, the subject feels this split too much, so that it reaches the point of suffering, that is unquestionably a sign that illness has set in; and therefore something ought to be undertaken without delay. Best of all would be to change one’s way of life radically, to change one’s diet or even undertake a journey. A laxative would, of course, be helpful.