Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Five/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
DEATH
On the next morning communion was administered to the sick man. Nikolaï prayed fervently during the ceremony. There was such an expression of passionate entreaty and prayer in his great eyes gazing at the sacred image placed on a card-table covered with a colored towel that it was terrible for Levin to look at him so; for he knew that this passionate entreaty and hope made it all the harder for him to part from life, to which he clung so desperately. He knew his brother and the trend of his thoughts; he knew that his skepticism did not arise from the fact that it was easier for him to live without a religion, but from the fact that gradually his religious behefs had been supplanted by the theories of modern science; and therefore he knew that his return to faith was not logical or normal, but was ephemeral and due simply to his unreasonable hope for recovery. He knew likewise that Kitty had strengthened this hope by her stories of extraordinary cures.
Levin knew all this and was tormented by these thoughts as he looked at his brother's beseeching, hopeful eyes, as he saw his difficulty in lifting his emaciated hand to touch his yellow forehead to make the sign of the cross, and saw his fleshless shoulders, and his hollow, rattling chest, unable longer to contain the life which he was begging to have restored. During the sacrament Levin did what he had done a thousand times, skeptic that he was:—
"Heal this man if Thou dost exist," he said, addressing God, "and Thou wilt save me also."
The invalid felt suddenly much better after the anointing with the holy oil; for more than an hour he did not cough once. He assured Kitty, as he kissed her hand with smiles and tears of thanksgiving, that he felt well, that he was not suffering, and that he felt a return of strength and appetite. When his broth was brought, he got up by himself and asked for a cutlet. Hopeless as his case was, impossible as his recovery was, as any one might see by a glance. Levin and Kitty spent this hour in a kind of timid joy.
"Is he not better?"
"Much better."
"It is astonishing."
"Why should it be astonishing?"
"He is certainly better," they whispered, smiling at each other.
The illusion did not last. The sick man went serenely to sleep, but after half an hour his cough wakened him and instantly those who were with him and the sick man himself lost all hope. The actuality of suffering unquestioned made them forget their late hopes. Nikolaï, giving no thought to what he had believed a half-hour previously, and apparently ashamed even to remember it, asked for a bottle of iodin to inhale.
Levin gave him the bottle, which was covered with a piece of perforated paper, and his brother looked at him with the same imploring, passionate look which he had given the image, as if asking him to confirm the words of the doctor, who attributed miraculous virtues to the inhaling of iodin.
"Kitty isn't here?" he asked in his hoarse whisper, when Levin had unwilhngly repeated the doctor's words,
"No? then I may speak! ... I played the comedy for her sake. .... She is so sweet! But you and I cannot deceive ourselves! This is what I put my faith in," said he, pressing the bottle in his bony hands as he smelt the iodin.
About eight o'clock in the evening Levin and his wife were taking tea in their room, when Marya Nikolayevna came running toward them all out of breath. She was pale, and her lips trembled.
"He is dying!" she whispered, "I am afraid that he is dying!"
Both of them hurried to Nikolaï. He had lifted himself, and was sitting up in bed leaning on his elbow, his head bowed, his long back bent.
"How do you feel?" asked Levin, tenderly, after a moment of silence.
"I feel that I am going," whispered Nikolaï, struggling painfully to speak, but as yet pronouncing the words distinctly. He did not raise his head, but only turned his eyes up, without seeing his brother's face.
"Katya, go away!" he whispered once again.
Levin sprang up and in an imperative whisper bade her leave the room.
"I am going," the dying man whispered once again.
"Why do you think so?" asked Levin, for the sake of saying something.
"Because I am going," he repeated, as if he had an affection for the phrase. "It is the end."
Marya Nikolayevna came to him.
"If you would lie down, it would be easier for you," said she.
"Soon I shall be lying down," he remarked softly,—"dead," he added, with angry irony. "Well, lay me back, if you will."
Levin laid his brother down on his back, took a seat near him, and, hardly able to breathe, gazed into his face. The dying man lay with his eyes shut, but the muscles of his forehead twitched from time to time as if he were in deep thought. Levin involuntarily tried to comprehend what was taking place in him, but in spite of all the efforts of his mind to accompany his brother's thoughts, he saw by the expression of his calm stern face, and the play of the muscles above his eyebrows, that his brother perceived mysteries hidden from him.
"Yes .... yes .... so," the dying man murmured slowly, with long pauses; "lay me down!" Then long silence followed. "So!" said he suddenly, with an expression of content as if all had been explained for him. "O Lord!" he exclaimed, and he sighed heavily.
Marya Nikolayevna felt of his feet. "They are growing cold," she said in a low voice.
Long, very long, as it seemed to Levin, the sick man remained motionless; but he was still alive, and sighed from time to time.
Weary from the mental strain. Levin felt that in spite of all his efforts he could not understand what his brother meant to express by the exclamation "So," He seemed to be far away from the dying man; he could no longer think of the mystery of death; the most incongruous ideas came into his mind. He asked himself what he was going to do;—to close his eyes, dress him, order the coffin? Strange! he felt perfectly cold and indifferent; he did not experience any sense of grief or loss, or even the least pity for his brother; the principal feeling that he had was one almost of envy for the knowledge which the dying man would soon have and which he himself could not have.
Long he waited by his bedside, expecting the end; it did not come. The door opened, and Kitty came in. He got up to stop her, but instantly heard the dying man move.
"Don't go away!" said Nikolaï, stretching out his hand. Levin took it, and angrily motioned his wife away.
Still holding the dying man's hand, he waited a half-hour—an hour—and still another hour. He ceased to think of death; he thought what Kitty was doing. Who was occupying the next room? Had the doctor a house of his own? Then he became hungry and sleepy. He gently let go the dying man's hand and felt of his feet. His feet and legs were cold; but still Nikolaï was breathing. Levin started to go away on his tiptoes; but again the invalid stirred, and said, "Don't go away!" ****** It began to grow light; the situation was unchanged. Levin gently rose, and without looking at his brother went to his room, and fell asleep. When he awoke, instead of hearing of his brother's death as he expected, he was told that he had come to his senses again. He was sitting up in bed, was coughing, and wanted something to eat. He became talkative, but ceased to talk about death, and once more began to express the hope of getting well again, and was more irritable and restless than before. No one, not even his brother or Kitty, could calm him. He was angry with them all, and said disagreeable things, and blamed every one for his sufferings, demanding that the famous doctor from Moscow should be sent for; and whenever they asked him how he was, he replied with expressions of anger and reproach, "I am suffering terrible, unendurable agony."
He suffered more and more, especially from his bed-sores, which they were wholly unable to heal, and his irritability kept increasing, and he reproached them all bitterly, especially because they did not fetch the doctor from Moscow. Kitty tried every means in her power to help him, to calm him; but it was all in vain, and Levin saw that she was suffering physically as well as morally, although she would not confess it.
The sentiment of death which had been aroused in all by his farewell to life that night when he had summoned his brother was mightily weakened. All knew that he would inevitably and speedily reach the end, that he was already half dead. They all felt that the sooner he died the better it would be; yet, concealing this, they still gave him medicines from vials, sent for new medicines and doctors, and they deceived him and themselves and one another; all this was falsehood, vile, humiliating, blasphemous falsehood. And this falsehood was more painful to Konstantin than to the others, because he loved his brother more deeply, and because nothing was more contrary to his nature than lack of sincerity.
Levin, who had long felt the desire to reconcile his two brothers before Nikolaï should die, wrote to Sergyeï Ivanovitch. He replied, and Konstantin read the letter to the sick man: Sergyeï Ivanovitch could not come but he asked his brother's pardon in touching terms.
Nikolaï said nothing.
"What shall I write him?" asked Konstantin. "I hope you are not angry with him."
"No, not at all," replied Nikolaï, in a tone of vexation. "Write him to send me the doctor."
Three cruel days passed in this manner, the invalid remaining in the same condition. All those who saw him—the hotel waiter and the landlord and all the lodgers and the doctor and Marya Nikolayevna and Levin and Kitty—now wished only one thing, and that was his death. The invalid only did not express any such wish, but, on the contrary, continually grumbled because they did not send for the doctor; and he took his remedies and he spoke of life. Only at rare moments, when opium caused him for a little to be oblivious of his incessant agony, he would in a sort of doze confess what weighed on his mind even more heavily than on the others': "Akh! If this could only end!" or "When this is over."
His sufferings, growing ever more and more severe, did their work and prepared him to die. There was no position in which he could find relief; there was not a moment in which he could forget himself; there was not a place or a single member of his body that did not cause him pain, agony. Even the memories, the impressions, and the thoughts about his body now awakened in him the same feeling of repulsion as his body itself; the sight of other people and their talk, their individual recollections, were a torment to him. Those who surrounded him felt it and instinctively refrained in his presence from using any freedom of motion, from conversation or from expressing their wishes. All his life was concentrated in one feeling, suffering, and in an ardent desire to be freed from it.
Evidently there was accomplishing in him that revolution whereby he would be induced to look on death as a consummation of his desires, even as a joy. Hitherto, every individual desire called forth by suffering or privation, as by hunger, weariness, thirst, was satisfied by some bodily exercise producing pleasure; but now privation and suffering got no relief and any attempt at relieving them caused new suffering. And so all his desires were concentrated on one thing,—the wish to be delivered from all his woes and the very source of his woes, from his body. But he had no words to express this thought, and he continued out of habit to ask for what once gave him comfort, but could no longer satisfy him. "Turn me on the other side," he would say, and then immediately wish to return to his former position. "Give me bouillon! Take it away! Speak, and don't stay so still!" and as soon as any one began to speak, he would shut his eyes and show fatigue, indifference, and disgust.
On the tenth day after their arrival Kitty was taken ill; she had a headache and nausea and all the morning felt unable to get up.
The doctor declared that it was caused by her emotions and weariness. He advised quiet and rest.
Yet, after dinner, she got up and went as usual with her work to Nikolaï's room. He looked at her sternly and smiled scornfully when she told him that she had been ill. All day long he never ceased to cough and to groan piteously.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Worse," he replied with difficulty. "I am in pain,"
"Where do you feel the pain?"
"All over."
"You will see the end will come to-day," said Marya Nikolayevna, in an undertone.
Levin hushed her, thinking that his brother, whose ear was very acute, might hear; he turned and looked at him. Nikolaï had heard, but the words made no impression; his look remained as before, reproachful and intense.
"What makes you think so?" asked Levin, when she followed him into the corridor.
"He has begun to pick with his fingers."
"What do you mean?"
"This way," she said, plucking at the folds of her woolen dress. Levin himself noticed that all that day the invalid had been plucking at his bed-clothes as if to pick off something.
Marya Nikolayevna's prediction came true. Toward evening Nikolaï had not strength enough left to lift his arms, and his motionless eyes assumed an expression of concentrated attention. Even when his brother and Kitty bent over him in order that he might see them, this look remained unchanged. Kitty had the priest summoned to say the prayers for the dying.
While the priest was reading the prayer, the dying man gave no sign of life. His eyes were closed. Levin, Kitty, and Marya Nikolayevna were standing by his bedside. Before the prayers were ended, Nikolaï stretched himself a little, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, having finished the prayer, placed the crucifix on his icy brow, then put it under his stole, and after he had stood for a moment or two longer, silently he touched the huge bloodless hand.
"It is all over," he said at last, and started to go away; but suddenly Nikolaï's lips trembled slightly, and from the depths of his breast came these words, which sounded distinctly in the silent room:—
"Not yet.... soon."
A moment later his face brightened, a smile came to his lips, and the women who had been summoned hastened to lay out the body.
The sight of his brother and the propinquity of death awakened in Levin's mind that feeling of horror at the inexplicability and the unavoidableness of death, just as he had felt on that autumn night when his brother came to see him. This feeling was now more intense than ever. More than ever he felt his inabihty to fathom this mystery, and even more terrible seemed to him its proximity. But now, thanks to his wife's presence, this feeling did not lead him to despair; for in spite of his terrors he felt the need of living, and loving. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love became all the stronger and purer because it was threatened.
And scarcely had this mystery of death taken place before his eyes ere he found himself face to face with another miracle of love and of life equally unfathomable.
The doctor confirmed his surmise in regard to Kitty. Her discomfort was the beginning of pregnancy.