Gerasim soothed him. Ivan Il'ich wanted to weep, and he wanted others to caress him and weep over him; and then his colleague, the functionary Shebek, comes to see him, and instead of weeping and allowing himself to be caressed, Ivan Il'ich puts on a serious, severe, profound expression of face, and, as far as his inertia will allow him, delivers his opinion on the significance of the judgments of the Court of Appeal, and obstinately clings to the subject. This lie, all around him, and within himself, envenomed more than anything else the last days of the life of Ivan Il'ich.
VIII.
It was morning. It was only morning because Gerasim went away, and Peter the lackey appeared, extinguished the candles, opened one of the curtains, and began very quietly to tidy up the room. Whether it was morning or evening, or Friday or Sunday — it didn't matter which — it was all one and the same thing: the dull, dragging, torturing pain, never for an instant still, the hopeless consciousness of a life that was constantly ebbing, but had not yet quite ebbed away; the consciousness of death, the hateful and terrible, ever-advancing death, the one reality, and yet all this lying going on at the same time. How could there be any talk here of days or weeks, or the days of the week?
"Did you order tea, sir?"
It is a necessary rule that the gentry should drink tea in the morning, he thought to himself, but he only said no.
