In these latter days he would go into the drawing-room he had arranged – that drawing-room where he had fallen and for the sake of which (how bitterly ridiculous it seemed) he had sacrificed his life – for he knew that his illness originated with that knock. He would enter and see that something had scratched the polished table. He would look for the cause of this and find that it was the bronze ornamentation of an album, that had got bent. He would take up the expensive album which he had lovingly arranged, and feel vexed with his daughter and her friends for their untidiness – for the album was torn here and there and some of the photographs turned upside down. He would put it carefully in order and bend the ornamentation back into position. Then it would occur to him to place all those things in another corner of the room, near the plants. He would call the footman, but his daughter or wife would come to help him. They would not agree, and his wife would contradict him, and he would dispute and grow angry. But that was all right, for then he did not think about It. It was invisible.
But then, when he was moving something himself, his wife would say: ‘Let the servants do it. You will hurt yourself again.’ And suddenly It would flash through the screen and he would see it. It was just a flash, and he hoped it would disappear, but he would involuntarily pay attention to his side. ‘It sits there as before, gnawing just the same!’ And he could no longer forget It, but could distinctly see it looking at him from behind the flowers. ‘What is it all for?’
‘It really is so! I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and how stupid. It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is.’
He would go to his study, lie down, and again be alone with It: face to face with It. And nothing could be done with It except to look at it and shudder.
VII
HOW it happened it is impossible to say because it came about step by step, unnoticed, but in the third month of Iván Ilých’s illness, his wife, his daughter, his son, his acquaintances, the doctors, the servants, and above all he himself, were aware that the whole interest he had for other people was whether he would soon vacate his place, and at last release the living from the discomfort caused by his presence and be himself released from his sufferings.
He slept less and less. He was given opium and hypodermic injections of morphine, but this did not relieve him. The dull depression he experienced in a somnolent condition at first gave him a little relief, but only as something new, afterwards it became as distressing as the pain itself or even more so.
Special foods were prepared for him by the doctors’ orders, but all those foods became increasingly distasteful and disgusting to him.
For his excretions also special arrangements had to be made, and this was a torment to him every time – a torment from the uncleanliness, the unseemliness, and the smell, and from knowing that another person had to take part in it.
But just through this most unpleasant matter, Iván Ilých obtained comfort. Gerásim, the butler’s young assistant, always came in to carry the things out. Gerásim was a clean, fresh peasant lad, grown stout on town food and always cheerful and bright. At first the sight of him, in his clean Russian peasant costume, engaged on that disgusting task embarrassed Iván Ilých.
Once when he got up from the commode too weak to draw up his trousers, he dropped into a soft armchair and looked with horror at his bare, enfeebled thighs with the muscles so sharply marked on them.
Gerásim with a firm light tread, his heavy boots emitting a pleasant smell of tar and fresh winter air, came in wearing a clean Hessian apron, the sleeves of his print shirt tucked up over his strong bare young arms; and refraining from looking at his sick master out of consideration for his feelings, and restraining the joy of life that beamed from his face, he went up to the commode.
‘Gerásim!’ said Iván Ilých in a weak voice.
Gerásim started, evidently afraid he might have committed some blunder, and with a rapid movement turned his fresh, kind, simple young face which just showed the first downy signs of a beard.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘That must be very unpleasant for you. You must forgive me. I am helpless.’
‘Oh, why, sir,’ and Gerásim’s eyes beamed and he showed his glistening white teeth, ‘what’s a little trouble? It’s a case of illness with you, sir.’
And his deft strong hands did their accustomed task, and he went out of the room stepping lightly. Five minutes later he as lightly returned.
Iván Ilých was still sitting in the same position in the armchair.
‘Gerásim,’ he said when the latter had replaced the freshly-washed utensil. ‘Please come here and help me.’ Gerásim went up to him. ‘Lift me up. It is hard for me to get up, and I have sent Dmítri away.’
Gerásim went up to him, grasped his master with his strong arms deftly but gently, in the same way that he stepped – lifted him, supported him with one hand, and with the other drew up his trousers and would have set him down again, but Iván Ilých asked to be led to the sofa. Gerásim, without an effort and without apparent pressure, led him, almost lifting him, to the sofa and placed him on it.
‘Thank you. How easily and well you do it all!’
Gerásim smiled again and turned to leave the room. But Iván Ilých felt his presence such a comfort that he did not want to let him go.
‘One thing more, please move up that chair. No, the other one – under my feet. It is easier for me when my feet are raised.’
Gerásim brought the chair, set it down gently in place, and raised Iván Ilých’s legs on to it. It seemed to Iván Ilých that he felt better while Gerásim was holding up his legs.
‘It’s better when my legs are higher,’ he said. ‘Place that cushion under them.’
Gerásim did so. He again lifted the legs and placed them, and again Iván Ilých felt better while Gerásim held his legs. When he set them down Iván Ilých fancied he felt worse.
‘Gerásim,’ he said. ‘Are you busy now?’
‘Not at all, sir,’ said Gerásim, who had learnt from the townsfolk how to speak to gentlefolk.
‘What have you still to do?’
‘What have I to do? I’ve done everything except chopping the logs for to-morrow.’
‘Then hold my legs up a bit higher, can you?’
‘Of course I can. Why not?’ And Gerásim raised his master’s legs higher and Iván Ilých thought that in that position he did not feel any pain at all.
‘And how about the logs?’
‘Don’t trouble about that, sir. There’s plenty of time.’
Iván Ilých told Gerásim to sit down and hold his legs, and began to talk to him. And strange to say it seemed to him that he felt better while Gerásim held his legs up.
After that Iván Ilých would sometimes call Gerásim and get him to hold his legs on his shoulders, and he liked talking to him. Gerásim did it all easily, willingly, simply, and with a good nature that touched Iván Ilých. Health, strength, and vitality in other people were offensive to him, but Gerásim’s strength and vitality did not mortify but soothed him.
What tormented Iván Ilých most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and that he only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result. He however knew that do what they would nothing would come of it, only still more agonizing suffering and death. This deception tortured him – their not wishing to admit what they all knew and what he knew, but wanting to lie to him concerning his terrible condition, and wishing and forcing him to participate in that lie. Those lies – lies enacted over him on the eve of his death and destined to degrade this awful, solemn act to the level of their visitings, their curtains, their sturgeon for dinner – were a terrible agony for Iván Ilých. And strangely enough, many times when they were going through their antics over him he had been within a hairbreadth of calling out to them: ‘Stop lying! You know and I know that I am dying. Then at least stop lying about it!’ But he had never had the spirit to do it. The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing-room diffusing an unpleasant odour) and this was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position. Only Gerásim recognized it and pitied him. And so Iván Ilých felt at ease only with him. He felt comforted when Gerásim supported his legs (sometimes all night long) and refused to go to bed, saying: ‘Don’t you worry, Iván Ilých. I’ll get sleep enough later on,’ or when he suddenly became familiar and exclaimed: ‘If you weren’t sick it would be another matter, but as it is, why should I grudge a little trouble?’ Gerásim alone did not lie; everything showed that he alone understood the facts of the case and did not consider it necessary to disguise them, but simply felt sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled master. Once when Iván Ilých was sending him away he even said straight out: ‘We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a little trouble?’ – expressing the fact that he did not think his work burdensome, because he was doing it for a dying man and hoped someone would do the same for him when his time came.