Latterly during that loneliness in which he found himself as he lay facing the back of the sofa, a loneliness in the midst of a populous town and surrounded by numerous acquaintances and relations but that yet could not have been more complete anywhere – either at the bottom of the sea or under the earth – during that terrible loneliness Iván Ilých had lived only in memories of the past. Pictures of his past rose before him one after another. They always began with what was nearest in time and then went back to what was most remote – to his childhood – and rested there. If he thought of the stewed prunes that had been offered him that day, his mind went back to the raw shrivelled French plums of his childhood, their peculiar flavour and the flow of saliva when he sucked their stones, and along with the memory of that taste came a whole series of memories of those days: his nurse, his brother, and their toys. ‘No, I mustn’t think of that.… It is too painful,’ Iván Ilých said to himself, and brought himself back to the present – to the button on the back of the sofa and the creases in its morocco. ‘Morocco is expensive, but it does not wear well: there had been a quarrel about it. It was a different kind of quarrel and a different kind of morocco that time when we tore father’s portfolio and were punished, and mamma brought us some tarts.…’ And again his thoughts dwelt on his childhood, and again it was painful and he tried to banish them and fix his mind on something else.
Then again together with that chain of memories another series passed through his mind – of how his illness had progressed and grown worse. There also the further back he looked the more life there had been. There had been more of what was good in life and more of life itself. The two merged together. ‘Just as the pain went on getting worse and worse, so my life grew worse and worse,’ he thought. ‘There is one bright spot there at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more and more rapidly – in inverse ratio to the square of the distance from death,’ thought Iván Ilých. And the example of a stone falling downwards with increasing velocity entered his mind. Life, a series of increasing sufferings, flies further and further towards its end – the most terrible suffering. ‘I am flying.…’ He shuddered, shifted himself, and tried to resist, but was already aware that resistance was impossible, and again with eyes weary of gazing but unable to cease seeing what was before them, he stared at the back of the sofa and waited – awaiting that dreadful fall and shock and destruction.
‘Resistance is impossible!’ he said to himself. ‘If I could only understand what it is all for! But that too is impossible. An explanation would be possible if it could be said that I have not lived as I ought to. But it is impossible to say that,’ and he remembered all the legality, correctitude, and propriety of his life. ‘That at any rate can certainly not be admitted,’ he thought, and his lips smiled ironically as if someone could see that smile and be taken in by it. ‘There is no explanation! Agony, death.… What for?’
XI
ANOTHER two weeks went by in this way and during that fortnight an event occurred that Iván Ilých and his wife had desired. Petríshchev formally proposed. It happened in the evening. The next day Praskóvya Fëdorovna came into her husband’s room considering how best to inform him of it, but that very night there had been a fresh change for the worse in his condition. She found him still lying on the sofa but in a different position. He lay on his back, groaning and staring fixedly straight in front of him.
She began to remind him of his medicines, but he turned his eyes towards her with such a look that she did not finish what she was saying; so great an animosity, to her in particular, did that look express.
‘For Christ’s sake let me die in peace!’ he said.
She would have gone away, but just then their daughter came in and went up to say good morning. He looked at her as he had done at his wife, and in reply to her inquiry about his health said dryly that he would soon free them all of himself. They were both silent and after sitting with him for a while went away.
‘Is it our fault?’ Lisa said to her mother. ‘It’s as if we were to blame! I am sorry for papa, but why should we be tortured?’
The doctor came at his usual time. Iván Ilých answered ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, never taking his angry eyes from him, and at last said: ‘You know you can do nothing for me, so leave me alone.’
‘We can ease your sufferings.’
‘You can’t even do that. Let me be.’
The doctor went into the drawing-room and told Praskóvya Fëdorovna that the case was very serious and that the only resource left was opium to allay her husband’s sufferings, which must be terrible.
