Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [292]
‘Don’t go.’
Day broke; the sick man’s condition was the same. Levin, quietly freeing his hand, not looking at the dying man, went to his room and fell asleep. When he woke up, instead of the news of his brother’s death that he had expected, he learned that the sick man had reverted to his earlier condition. He again began to sit up, to cough, began to eat again, to talk, and again stopped talking about death, again began to express hope for recovery and became still more irritable and gloomy than before. No one, neither his brother nor Kitty, could comfort him. He was angry with everyone and said unpleasant things to everyone, reproached everyone for his suffering and demanded that a famous doctor be brought to him from Moscow. To all questions about how he felt, he replied uniformly with an expression of spite and reproach:
‘I’m suffering terribly, unbearably!’
The sick man suffered more and more, especially from bedsores, which would no longer heal over, and was more and more angry with those around him, reproaching them for everything, especially for not bringing him a doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried her best to help him, to comfort him; but it was all in vain, and Levin could see that she herself was physically and morally exhausted, though she would not admit it. That sense of death evoked in them all by his farewell to life on the night he summoned his brother was destroyed. They all knew he would die inevitably and soon, that he was already half dead. They all desired only one thing - that he die as soon as possible - yet, concealing it, they gave him medicine from vials, went looking for medicines and doctors, and deceived him, and themselves, and each other. All this was a lie, a foul, insulting and blasphemous lie. And Levin, by a peculiarity of his character, and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else did, felt this lie especially painfully.
Levin, who had long been occupied with the thought of reconciling his brothers, if only in the face of death, had written to his brother Sergei Ivanovich and, having received a reply from him, read this letter to the sick man. Sergei Ivanovich wrote that he could not come himself, but in moving words asked his brother’s forgiveness.
The sick man said nothing.
‘What shall I write to him?’ asked Levin. ‘You’re not angry with him, I hope?’
‘No, not in the least!’ Nikolai replied vexedly to this question. ‘Write to him to send me a doctor.’
Three more days of torment went by; the sick man was in the same condition. A desire for his death was now felt by everyone who saw him: the servants in the hotel, its proprietor, all the lodgers, the doctor, Marya Nikolaevna, and Levin and Kitty. The sick man alone did not express this feeling, but, on the contrary, was angry that the doctor had not been brought, went on taking medicine and talked about life. Only in rare moments, when the opium made him momentarily forget his incessant suffering, did he sometimes say in half sleep what was stronger in his soul that in anyone else’s: ‘Ah, if only this were the end!’ Or: ‘When will it end!’
Suffering, steadily increasing, did its part in preparing him for death. There was no position in which he did not suffer, no moment when he was oblivious, no part or limb of his body that did not hurt, that did not torment him. Even this body’s memories, impressions and thoughts now evoked in him the same revulsion as the body itself. The sight of other people, their conversation, his own memories - all this was sheer torment to him. Those around him felt it and unconsciously forbade themselves any free movement, conversation, expression of their wishes. His whole life merged into one feeling of suffering and the wish to be rid of it.
A turnabout was obviously taking place that was to make him look at death as the satisfaction of his desires, as happiness. Formerly each separate desire caused by suffering or privation, such as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by a bodily function that gave pleasure; but now privation and suffering received no