第15章

But he did not give himself up to it, and went to the drawing-room for tea.There were callers there, including the examining magistrate who was a desirable match for his daughter, and they were conversing, playing the piano, and singing.Ivan Ilych, as Praskovya Fedorovna remarked, spent that evening more cheerfully than usual, but he never for a moment forgot that he had postponed the important matter of the appendix.At eleven o'clock he said goodnight and went to his bedroom.Since his illness he had slept alone in a small room next to his study.He undressed and took up a novel by Zola, but instead of reading it he fell into thought, and in his imagination that desired improvement in the vermiform appendix occurred.There was the absorption and evacuation and the re-establishment of normal activity."Yes, that's it!" he said to himself."One need only assist nature, that's all." He remembered his medicine, rose, took it, and lay down on his back watching for the beneficent action of the medicine and for it to lessen the pain."I need only take it regularly and avoid all injurious influences.I am already feeling better, much better." He began touching his side: it was not painful to the touch."There, Ireally don't feel it.It's much better already." He put out the light and turned on his side..."The appendix is getting better, absorption is occurring." Suddenly he felt the old, familiar, dull, gnawing pain, stubborn and serious.There was the same familiar loathsome taste in his mouth.His heart sand and he felt dazed."My God! My God!" he muttered."Again, again! And it will never cease." And suddenly the matter presented itself in a quite different aspect."Vermiform appendix! Kidney!" he said to himself."It's not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life and...death.Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and Icannot stop it.Yes.Why deceive myself? Isn't it obvious to everyone but me that I'm dying, and that it's only a question of weeks, days...it may happen this moment.There was light and now there is darkness.I was here and now I'm going there! Where?" Achill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt only the throbbing of his heart.

"When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing.

Then where shall I be when I am no more? Can this be dying? No, I don't want to!" He jumped up and tried to light the candle, felt for it with trembling hands, dropped candle and candlestick on the floor, and fell back on his pillow.

"What's the use? It makes no difference," he said to himself, staring with wide-open eyes into the darkness."Death.Yes, death.And none of them knows or wishes to know it, and they have no pity for me.Now they are playing." (He heard through the door the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "It's all the same to them, but they will die too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them.And now they are merry...the beasts!"Anger choked him and he was agonizingly, unbearably miserable.

"It is impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer this awful horror!" He raised himself.

"Something must be wrong.I must calm myself -- must think it all over from the beginning." And he again began thinking."Yes, the beginning of my illness: I knocked my side, but I was still quite well that day and the next.It hurt a little, then rather more.I saw the doctors, then followed despondency and anguish, more doctors, and I drew nearer to the abyss.My strength grew less and I kept coming nearer and nearer, and now I have wasted away and there is no light in my eyes.I think of the appendix --but this is death! I think of mending the appendix, and all the while here is death! Can it really be death?" Again terror seized him and he gasped for breath.He leant down and began feeling for the matches, pressing with his elbow on the stand beside the bed.

It was in his way and hurt him, he grew furious with it, pressed on it still harder, and upset it.Breathless and in despair he fell on his back, expecting death to come immediately.

Meanwhile the visitors were leaving.Praskovya Fedorovna was seeing them off.She heard something fall and came in.

"What has happened?"

"Nothing.I knocked it over accidentally."She went out and returned with a candle.He lay there panting heavily, like a man who has run a thousand yards, and stared upwards at her with a fixed look.

"What is it, Jean?"

"No...o...thing.I upset it." ("Why speak of it? She won't understand," he thought.)And in truth she did not understand.She picked up the stand, lit his candle, and hurried away to see another visitor off.When she came back he still lay on his back, looking upwards.

"What is it? Do you feel worse?"

"Yes."

She shook her head and sat down.

"Do you know, Jean, I think we must ask Leshchetitsky to come and see you here."This meant calling in the famous specialist, regardless of expense.He smiled malignantly and said "No." She remained a little longer and then went up to him and kissed his forehead.

While she was kissing him he hated her from the bottom of his soul and with difficulty refrained from pushing her away.

"Good night.Please God you'll sleep."

"Yes."