“Yes, you see this woman, Marya Nikolaevna, did not know how to
manage all this,” said Levin. “And … I must own I’m very, very glad you
came. You are such purity that….” He took her hand and did not kiss it (to
kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him improper); he
merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her brightening eyes.
“It would have been miserable for you to be alone,” she said, and lifting
her hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure, twisted her coil of
hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. “No,” she went on, “she
did not know how…. Luckily, I learned a lot at Soden.”
“Surely there are not people there so ill?”
“Worse.”
“What’s so awful to me is that I can’t see him as he was when he was
young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did
not understand him then.”
“I can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been
friends!” she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked round at
her husband, and tears came into her eyes.
“Yes, might have been,” he said mournfully. “He’s just one of those
people of whom they say they’re not for this world.”
“But we have many days before us; we must go to bed,” said Kitty,
glancing at her tiny watch.
Chapter 20
The next day the sick man received the sacrament and extreme unction.
During the ceremony Nikolay Levin prayed fervently. His great eyes,
fastened on the holy image that was set out on a card-table covered with a
colored napkin, expressed such passionate prayer and hope that it was awful
to Levin to see it. Levin knew that this passionate prayer and hope would
only make him feel more bitterly parting from the life he so loved. Levin
knew his brother and the workings of his intellect: he knew that his unbelief
came not from life being easier for him without faith, but had grown up
because step by step the contemporary scientific interpretation of natural
phenomena crushed out the possibility of faith; and so he knew that his
present return was not a legitimate one, brought about by way of the same
working of his intellect, but simply a temporary, interested return to faith in
a desperate hope of recovery. Levin knew too that Kitty had strengthened
his hope by accounts of the marvelous recoveries she had heard of. Levin
knew all this; and it was agonizingly painful to him to behold the
supplicating, hopeful eyes and the emaciated wrist, lifted with difficulty,
making the sign of the cross on the tense brow, and the prominent shoulders
and hollow, gasping chest, which one could not feel consistent with the life
the sick man was praying for. During the sacrament Levin did what he, an
unbeliever, had done a thousand times. He said, addressing God, “If Thou
dost exist, make this man to recover” (of course this same thing has been
repeated many times), “and Thou wilt save him and me.”
After extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better. He did
not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Kitty’s hand,
thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free from pain, and
that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised himself when his
soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly ill as he was,
obvious as it was at the first glance that he could not recover, Levin and
Kitty were for that hour both in the same state of excitement, happy, though
fearful of being mistaken.
“Is he better?”
“Yes, much.”
“It’s wonderful.”
“There’s nothing wonderful in it.”
“Anyway, he’s better,” they said in a whisper, smiling to one another.
This self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into a
quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough. And all at
once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself. The reality of
his suffering crushed all hopes in Levin and Kitty and in the sick man
himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes.
Without referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as
though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a bottle
covered with perforated paper. Levin gave him the bottle, and the same look
of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament was now
fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation of the
doctor’s words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.
“Is Katya not here?” he gasped, looking round while Levin reluctantly
assented to the doctor’s words. “No; so I can say it…. It was for her sake I
went through that farce. She’s so sweet; but you and I can’t deceive
ourselves. This is what I believe in,” he said, and, squeezing the bottle in his
bony hand, he began breathing over it.
At eight o’clock in the evening Levin and his wife were drinking tea in
their room when Marya Nikolaevna ran in to them breathlessly. She was
pale, and her lips were quivering. “He is dying!” she whispered. “I’m afraid
will die this minute.”
Both of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow on the
bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.
“How do you feel?” Levin asked in a whisper, after a silence.
“I feel I’m setting off,” Nikolay said with difficulty, but with extreme
distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did not raise his head,
but simply turned his eyes upwards, without their reaching his brother’s
face. “Katya, go away!” he added.
Levin jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.
“I’m setting off,” he said again.
“Why do you think so?” said Levin, so as to say something.
“Because I’m setting off,” he repeated, as though he had a liking for the
phrase. “It’s the end.”
Marya Nikolaevna went up to him.
“You had better lie down; you’d be easier,” she said.
“I shall lie down soon enough,” he pronounced slowly, “when I’m dead,”
he said sarcastically, wrathfully. “Well, you can lay me down if you like.”
Levin laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed at his
face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but the
muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one thinking
deeply and intensely. Levin involuntarily thought with him of what it was
that was happening to him now, but in spite of all his mental efforts to go
along with him he saw by the expression of that calm, stern face that for the
dying man all was growing clearer and clearer that was still as dark as ever
for Levin.
“Yes, yes, so,” the dying man articulated slowly at intervals. “Wait a
little.” He was silent. “Right!” he pronounced all at once reassuringly, as
though all were solved for him. “O Lord!” he murmured, and sighed deeply.
Marya Nikolaevna felt his feet. “They’re getting cold,” she whispered.
For a long while, a very long while it seemed to Levin, the sick man lay
motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he sighed. Levin
by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that, with no mental
effort, could he understand what it was that was right. He could not even
think of the problem of death itself, but with no will of his own thoughts
kept coming to him of what he had to do next; closing the dead man’s eyes,
dressing him, ordering the coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly cold,
and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother.
If he had any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was envy for the
knowledge the dying man had now that he could not have.
A long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the end. But
the end did not come. The door opened and Kitty appeared. Levin got up to
stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he caught the sound of the
dying man stirring.
“Don’t go away,” said Nikolay and held out his hand. Levin gave him
his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away.
With the dying man’s hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an hour,
another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He wondered what Kitty
was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the doctor lived in a house
of his own. He longed for food and for sleep. He cautiously drew away his
hand and felt the feet. The feet were cold, but the sick man was still
breathing. Levin tried again to move away on tiptoe, but the sick man
stirred again and said: “Don’t go.”
The dawn came; the sick man’s condition was unchanged. Levin
stealthily withdrew his hand, and without looking at the dying man, went
off to his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead of news
of his brother’s death which he expected, he learned that the sick man had
returned to his earlier condition. He had begun sitting up again, coughing,
had begun eating again, talking again, and again had ceased to talk of death,
again had begun to express hope of his recovery, and had become more
irritable and more gloomy than ever. No one, neither his brother nor Kitty,
could soothe him. He was angry with everyone, and said nasty things to
everyone, reproached everyone for his sufferings, and insisted that they
should get him a celebrated doctor from Moscow. To all inquiries made him
as to how he felt, he made the same answer with an expression of vindictive
reproachfulness, “I’m suffering horribly, intolerably!”
The sick man was suffering more and more, especially from bedsores,
which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more and more angry
with everyone about him, blaming them for everything, and especially for
not having brought him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried in every possible
way to relieve him, to soothe him; but it was all in vain, and Levin saw that
she herself was exhausted both physically and morally, though she would
not admit it. The sense of death, which had been evoked in all by his taking
leave of life on the night when he had sent for his brother, was broken up.
Everyone knew that he must inevitably die soon, that he was half dead
already. Everyone wished for nothing but that he should die as soon as
possible, and everyone, concealing this, gave him medicines, tried to find
remedies and doctors, and deceived him and themselves and each other. All
this was falsehood, disgusting, irreverent deceit. And owing to the bent of
his character, and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else
did, Levin was most painfully conscious of this deceit.
Levin, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his
brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother, Sergey
Ivanovitch, and having received an answer from him, he read this letter to
the sick man. Sergey Ivanovitch wrote that he could not come himself, and
in touching terms he begged his brother’s forgiveness.
The sick man said nothing.
“What am I to write to him?” said Levin. “I hope you are not angry with
him?”
“No, not the least!” Nikolay answered, vexed at the question. “Tell him
to send me a doctor.”
Three more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the same
condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by everyone now at
the mere sight of him, by the waiters and the hotel-keeper and all the people
staying in the hotel, and the doctor and Marya Nikolaevna and Levin and
Kitty. The sick man alone did not express this feeling, but on the contrary
was furious at their not getting him doctors, and went on taking medicine
and talking of life. Only at rare moments, when the opium gave him an
instant’s relief from the never-ceasing pain, he would sometimes, half
asleep, utter what was ever more intense in his heart than in all the others:
“Oh, if it were only the end!” or: “When will it be over?”
His sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and
prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not in pain,
there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of it, not a limb, not a
part of his body that did not ache and cause him agony. Even the memories,
the impressions, the thoughts of this body awakened in him now the same
aversion as the body itself. The sight of other people, their remarks, his own
reminiscences, everything was for him a source of agony. Those about him
felt this, and instinctively did not allow themselves to move freely, to talk,
to express their wishes before him. All his life was merged in the one
feeling of suffering and desire to be rid of it.
There was evidently coming over him that revulsion that would make
him look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness. Hitherto each
individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger, fatigue,
thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving pleasure. But now
no physical craving or suffering received relief, and the effort to relieve
them only caused fresh suffering. And so all desires were merged in one—
the desire to be rid of all his sufferings and their source, the body. But he
had no words to express this desire of deliverance, and so he did not speak
of it, and from habit asked for the satisfaction of desires which could not
now be satisfied. “Turn me over on the other side,” he would say, and
immediately after he would ask to be turned back again as before. “Give me
some broth. Take away the broth. Talk of something: why are you silent?”
And directly they began to talk he would close his eyes, and would show
weariness, indifference, and loathing.
On the tenth day from their arrival at the town, Kitty was unwell. She
suffered from headache and sickness, and she could not get up all the
morning.
The doctor opined that the indisposition arose from fatigue and
excitement, and prescribed rest.
After dinner, however, Kitty got up and went as usual with her work to
the sick man. He looked at her sternly when she came in, and smiled
contemptuously when she said she had been unwell. That day he was
continually blowing his nose, and groaning piteously.
“How do you feel?” she asked him.
“Worse,” he articulated with difficulty. “In pain!”
“In pain, where?”
“Everywhere.”
“It will be over today, you will see,” said Marya Nikolaevna. Though it
was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing Levin had noticed was
very keen, must have heard. Levin said hush to her, and looked round at the
sick man. Nikolay had heard; but these words produced no effect on him.
His eyes had still the same intense, reproachful look.
“Why do you think so?” Levin asked her, when she had followed him
into the corridor.
“He has begun picking at himself,” said Marya Nikolaevna.
“How do you mean?”
“Like this,” she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt. Levin
noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at himself, as it were,
trying to snatch something away.
Marya Nikolaevna’s prediction came true. Towards night the sick man
was not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with the same
intensely concentrated expression in his eyes. Even when his brother or
Kitty bent over him, so that he could see them, he looked just the same.
Kitty sent for the priest to read the prayer for the dying.
While the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any sign of
life; his eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Marya Nikolaevna stood at the
bedside. The priest had not quite finished reading the prayer when the dying
man stretched, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, on finishing the
prayer, put the cross to the cold forehead, then slowly returned it to the
stand, and after standing for two minutes more in silence, he touched the
huge, bloodless hand that was turning cold.
“He is gone,” said the priest, and would have moved away; but suddenly
there was a faint stir in the mustaches of the dead man that seemed glued
together, and quite distinctly in the hush they heard from the bottom of the
chest the sharply defined sounds:
