The Last Station

40 L. N.

– FROM THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYCH

Time did not exist for three days, while he fought hard to resist the black bag into which a hidden, invisible source was stuffing him. He fought like a condemned man fights his executioner, even though he knows that no escape is possible. He knew that each moment, in spite of his resistance, he drew closer and closer to what most horrified him. He was in agony because of that black bag, that black hole, but it was worse because he could not simply slip in. What held him up was the feeling that his life had been a good one. This self-justification buoyed him up, kept him from progressing, provoked his anguish more than anything else.

Suddenly a pressure struck him in the chest, on the side, then constricted his breathing. He slipped into the black hole, hit bottom, and found it shining. What had occurred was like the experience of being in a railway carriage when one thinks it’s moving forward but it’s really going backward, then one suddenly realizes the truth.

‘So, what I’ve experienced thus far was not the “real thing.” No matter. But perhaps I can make it the “real thing,” perhaps. But what is this thing I want?’ Ivan Ilych asked himself, then grew still.

This happened near the end of the third day, an hour before he died. At that moment, his son crept softly into the room and approached his bed. The dying man continued to cry and flail his arms. One hand touched the boy’s head. The boy grabbed it, kissed it, and began to weep. At this moment, Ivan Ilych slipped through and saw a light, and it came to him that his life had not been what it might have but that the situation was not beyond repair. ‘Yet what is the real thing?’ he asked himself and grew still, listening. Then he felt someone kissing his hand. Opening his eyes, he saw his son. He felt sorry for him. Then his wife entered the room and approached him. She looked at him softly with an open mouth, with tears on her nose and cheeks, with despair on her face. He felt terribly sorry for her.

‘Indeed, I’m making their lives miserable,’ he said to himself. ‘They pity me, but it will be better for them all when I die.’ He wished to say this but had not strength to speak. ‘But why speak? I have to do something,’ he thought. He glanced at his wife and motioned to her to remove their son.

‘Take him away… I’m sorry… for him and you.’ He would have liked to have added, ‘Forgive me,’ but instead ‘Forget’ came out. He was too feeble to correct himself, however, and didn’t worry, since He would understand who had to know what he meant.

Suddenly it dawned on him that what had been weighing him down and would not disappear was vanishing, all at once – from two sides, ten sides, everywhere! He grieved for them and wanted to comfort them. To free them and himself from this anguish. ‘And the pain?’ he asked himself. ‘Where is it now? Where are you, Pain?’

He waited, anxious, for its return.

‘Ah, it’s still there. Well, so what? Let it be.’

‘And death? What is death?’

He tried to locate his accustomed fear of death and could not. Where was death? What death? He felt no fear because death did not exist.

Instead of death was light.

‘So, that’s it!’ he cried. ‘What joy!’

This all happened in an instant, but the significance was lasting. For those around him, his anguish stretched out for another two hours. A rattle invaded his chest; his wracked body trembled. Then the rattling and wheezing ceased.

‘It’s finished,’ someone said who stood beside him.

He heard this comment and repeated it in his soul.

‘Death is finished,’ he said to himself. ‘Death is no more.’

He sucked in quickly, broke off in midbreath, stretched out, and died.