The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man (5 page)

“Surely he wasn’t conscious?” asked Piotr Ivanovich.

“Yes, he was,” she whispered, “to the very last minute. He took his leave of us a quarter of an hour before he died, and even asked us to take Volodya out.”

Piotr Ivanovich forgot his uncomfortable awareness of his and her hypocrisy. He remembered this man, whom he had known so well as a cheerful child, a schoolboy, and a colleague, and was suddenly appalled by the thought of his suffering. He saw once more that brow, that nose pressed to the upper lip, and felt frightened for himself.

“Three days of appalling suffering, and death. Why, it could happen to me, too, at any time, even now,” he thought. For a moment he was terrified. But, he hardly knew how, the usual thoughts promptly came to his aid—that this had happened to Ivan Ilyich, not himself; that this neither could nor should happen to him; and that thinking such thoughts would only mean succumbing to gloom, which was not good for you, as Schwartz demonstrated. And, having followed this train of thought, Piotr Ivanovich grew calm and started eliciting the facts of Ivan Ilyich’s decease with interest, as though death were an experience proper only to Ivan Ilyich and not in the least to himself.

After some remarks about the really dreadful physical suffering endured by Ivan Ilyich (Piotr Ivanovich could find out only those details which affected Praskovya Feodorovna’s nervous disposition), the widow evidently decided it was time to get down to business.

“Oh, Piotr Ivanovich, it is so hard, so dreadfully hard, so dreadfully hard.” And she started crying again.

Piotr Ivanovich sighed and waited for her to blow her nose. When she had blown her nose, he said, “Believe me . . .” and she started talking again, finally broaching what had evidently been her main business with him—how she could get money out of the Treasury on her husband’s death. She made a show of asking Piotr Ivanovich for advice about her widow’s pension, but he could see she already knew more than he did, down to the smallest detail, about everything that could be wrung out of the Treasury. She really wanted to know whether there was any way of extracting anything further. Piotr Ivanovich tried to think up some other strategies, but, having given it a little thought and for politeness’s sake criticized the meanness of the government, he said he thought nothing more could be done. Then she sighed, palpably looking now for a way to get rid of her visitor. Realizing this, he extinguished his cigarette, rose, shook her hand, and went into the hall.

In the dining room with the clock that had so pleased Ivan Ilyich when he bought it in an antique shop, Piotr Ivanovich met the priest and some other acquaintances who had driven up for the funeral, and saw a familiar, beautiful young woman, the daughter of Ivan Ilyich. She was dressed in black. Her narrow waist seemed even narrower. She had a gloomy, decided, almost angry expression. She bowed to Piotr Ivanovich as though he were somehow to blame. Behind the daughter stood another figure familiar to Piotr Ivanovich, a wealthy young man with the same offended expression—an examining magistrate who was her fiancé, as Piotr Ivanovich had heard. He bowed wanly to them both and wanted to pass through to the room where the dead man lay, when the small figure of the schoolboy son, dreadfully like his father, appeared on the stair. This was a miniature Ivan Ilyich just as Piotr Ivanovich remembered him in law school. His eyes were tearstained and had that impure look
⁴
found in boys of thirteen and fourteen. Seeing Piotr Ivanovich, the boy frowned bashfully and severely. Piotr Ivanovich nodded to him and went into the dead man’s room. The funeral started—candles, groans, incense, tears, sobbing. Piotr Ivanovich stood with furrowed brow, staring at the feet in front of him. He didn’t look at the corpse once, resisted any impulse of emotional weakness to the very end, and was one of the first to leave. There was no one in the hall. Gerasim, the servant, popped out of the dead man’s room, rummaged with strong hands through all the furs to find Piotr Ivanovich’s coat, and held it out for him.

“Well, Gerasim?” said Piotr Ivanovich, for the sake of saying something. “It’s sad, isn’t it?”

“God’s will. We’ll all come to that,” said Gerasim, showing his white, even, peasant’s teeth, and, like a man caught up by many duties, briskly threw open the door, shouted for the coachman, helped Piotr Ivanovich up, and sprang back to the porch as though preoccupied with his next task.

Piotr Ivanovich was particularly glad of the fresh air after the smells of incense, carbolic acid, and the corpse.

“Where to?” asked the coachman.

“It’s not late. I’ll call on Feodor Vassilievich.”

And Piotr Ivanovich drove off. He found them finishing the first rubber, so it was quite convenient for him to make a fifth in the game.

2

The past history of Ivan Ilyich’s life was simple, commonplace, and most terrible.

Ivan Ilyich died when he was forty-five years old, a member of the Court of Justice. He was the son of a civil servant who had made a career for himself in Petersburg working in various ministries and departments. It was the kind of career that brings people to a position where they cannot be fired because of their long service and high rank, although they are clearly incapable of assuming any real responsibilities. So they are found fictional functions, with unfictional salaries of six to ten thousand rubles a year on which they live to a great age.

Such a man was Privy Councillor
⁵
Ilya Yefimovich Golovin, unnecessary member of various unnecessary departments.

He had three sons. The eldest son had a career similar to his father’s but in a different ministry, and was fast approaching that point in his service that brought with it—through sheer inertia—a salary for life. The third son was a failure. He ruined his prospects in various posts and was now working on the railways, and his father and brothers, and particularly their wives, not only disliked meeting him but avoided even remembering his existence except in extreme necessity. The sister married Baron Greff, a Petersburg civil servant like his father-in-law. Ivan Ilyich was
le phénix de la famille,
⁶
as they used to say. He was not as chilly and proper as his elder brother, nor as reckless as the younger. He was the midpoint between them—bright, lively, a pleasant and respectable man. He was educated along with his younger brother in the School of Jurisprudence. The younger brother did not complete his education and was expelled in the fifth grade, but Ivan Ilyich finished creditably. Even at school he was what he remained for the rest of his life—talented, likable, cheerfully sociable, but always strictly fulfilling what he felt to be his duties. And his duties were what he thought everyone in authority over him considered to be his duties. He was not a sycophant as a child nor as a grown man, but from his earliest years was drawn—as a fly to bright light—to those in the highest circles, learned from their example, echoed their ideas about life, and established friendly relations with them. All the enthusiasms of his childhood and youth passed away leaving barely a trace; he was sensuous and vain and, toward the end of his school years, acquired liberal views, but always within well-established parameters clearly identified by his instinct for correctness.

There were some things he did while he was at the School of Jurisprudence that had previously seemed pretty despicable to him and aroused a strong sense of self-loathing in him at the time. Subsequently, seeing comparable behavior in people of the highest standing who thought nothing of it, he began to feel that what he had done was not exactly good, but was certainly not worth remembering, and he felt no mortification when it did come to mind.

When Ivan Ilyich graduated from the School of Jurisprudence he was qualified for the tenth class in the civil service. His father provided funds for his outfit. He ordered himself clothes from Scharmer’s, hung a medallion on his watch chain inscribed with the words
respice finem,
took leave of his tutor and the prince who was patron of the law school, dined with his friends at Donon’s,
⁷
and with a fashionable new trunk, packed with linen, suits, shaving and toilet sets, and a rug, all ordered and bought from the best suppliers, left for one of the provinces, where his father had obtained a place for him as the Governor’s special assistant.

In the province Ivan Ilyich immediately arranged as easy and pleasant a life for himself as he had enjoyed at law school. He did his job, pursued his career, and at the same time indulged himself pleasantly and decorously. Occasionally he was sent on official business to country districts, where he behaved with dignity to high and low alike, maintaining a precise and incorruptible integrity on which he could not help priding himself, fulfilling the tasks entrusted to him, chiefly in connection with the affairs of the Old Believers.
⁸

In spite of his youth and predisposition for lighthearted amusement, in official business he was extraordinarily reserved, formal, and even stern, but in a social setting he was often playful, witty, always good-humored, correct and
bon enfant,
⁹
as his employer and his employer’s wife said of him. For them, he was part of the family.

There was also a liaison with one of the ladies who attached herself to the fashionable young lawyer; there was a milliner; there were drinking parties with visiting cavalry officers and visits to a certain street in the suburbs after dinner; there was, too, servility to his employer and even his employer’s wife. But all this was carried with such a tone of high propriety that none of it could be given a bad name: it all fell under the French saying,
il faut que jeunesse se passe.
¹⁰
Everything was done with clean hands in laundered shirts and embellished with French terms—and, above all, in the best possible company and consequently with the approval of the very best people.

Ivan Ilyich spent five years in this service, and then a change came. New legal institutions were created, and new men were needed.

And Ivan Ilyich became the new man.

He was offered the post of examining magistrate,
¹¹
and took it, even though the post was in a different province and he had to abandon the relationships he had built up and create new ones. Ivan Ilyich’s friends came to see him off, a group photograph was taken, they presented him with a silver cigarette case, and he left for his new assignment.

Ivan Ilyich the examining magistrate was just as decent and comme il faut
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as Ivan Ilyich the Governor’s assistant, just as good at separating official duties from his personal life, and just as adept at arousing widespread respect. The actual work of examining magistrate was much more attractive and interesting for him. In his previous post he had enjoyed wearing his uniform from Scharmer’s, strolling past anxious petitioners and official functionaries waiting for an audience, who enviously watched him going straight to the Governor’s office to have tea and a cigarette with him—but there were very few people who depended directly on his authority. There were only the chiefs of police and the Old Believers, when he was sent on special assignments to the rural districts. He liked to deal in a courteous and even comradely manner with these people, who did depend on him; he liked to let them feel that here he was, treating them simply and amicably when it was in his power to crush them. At that time there were few such people. But now, as examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich felt that everyone, everyone without exception, the most important and self-satisfied people, all of them lay in his power. He need only write certain words on a sheet of paper with an official letterhead, and this important, self-satisfied person will be brought to him as witness or accused, and if Ivan Ilyich chooses not to ask him to sit down, he will have to stand before him to answer his questions. Ivan Ilyich never abused his power; on the contrary, he tried to soften the way it was expressed, but the consciousness of this power and the possibility of softening it constituted the main interest and pleasure of his new post. In his actual work, that is, in the preliminary investigations, Ivan Ilyich very quickly mastered the knack of setting aside all considerations irrelevant to the official aspects of the case, reducing the most complicated matters to a formula in which only the external aspects were recorded, his personal opinion was strictly excluded, and, above all, the due formalities were observed. This was all new. And he was one of the first to apply the reformed Code of 1864
¹³
in practice.

When he moved to the new town to take up his post as examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich found himself new friends, made new contacts, established himself afresh, and assumed a slightly different manner. He set himself at a certain dignified distance from the provincial authorities, and selected the best circle among the legal and wealthy gentry living in the town. He affected a tone of light dissatisfaction with the government, moderate liberalism, and civilized public spirit. At the same time, without changing the elegance of his toilet in any way, in his new role Ivan Ilyich stopped shaving his chin and allowed his beard to grow as it pleased.

Ivan Ilyich’s life settled into just as happy a pattern in the new town. His chosen circle, which was in opposition to the Governor, was friendly and the company was good. His salary was larger, and whist, which he now started to play, brought considerable pleasure into his life. Ivan Ilyich had the gift of playing cards good-humoredly, quickly and shrewdly assessing his hand, so that in general he was always the winner.

After two years’ service in the new town, Ivan Ilyich met his future wife. Praskovya Feodorovna Mikhel was the most attractive, intelligent, brilliant girl in the circle frequented by Ivan Ilyich. Among the other pleasurable distractions from the labors of examining magistrate Ivan Ilyich established a light, playful relationship with Praskovya Feodorovna.