Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

Iván Ilých had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was liked by them all. He had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to be incurable. His post had been kept open for him, but there had been conjectures that in case of his death Alexéev might receive his appointment, and that either Vínnikov or Shtábel would succeed Alexéev. So on receiving the news of Iván Ilých’s death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances.

‘I shall be sure to get Shtábel’s place or Vínnikov’s,’ thought Fëdor Vasílievich. ‘I was promised that long ago, and the promotion means an extra eight hundred rubles a year for me besides the allowance.’

‘Now I must apply for my brother-in-law’s transfer from Kaluga,’ thought Peter Ivánovich. ‘My wife will be very glad, and then she won’t be able to say that I never do anything for her relations.’

‘I thought he would never leave his bed again,’ said Peter Ivánovich aloud. ‘It’s very sad.’

‘But what really was the matter with him?’

‘The doctors couldn’t say – at least they could, but each of them said something different. When last I saw him I thought he was getting better.’

‘And I haven’t been to see him since the holidays. I always meant to go.’

‘Had he any property?’

‘I think his wife had a little – but something quite trifling.’

‘We shall have to go to see her, but they live so terribly far away.’

‘Far away from you, you mean. Everything’s far away from your place.’

‘You see, he never can forgive my living on the other side of the river,’ said Peter Ivánovich, smiling at Shébek. Then, still talking of the distances between different parts of the city, they returned to the Court.

Besides considerations as to the possible transfers and promotions likely to result from Iván Ilých’s death, the mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the complacent feeling that, ‘it is he who is dead and not I’.

Each one thought or felt, ‘Well, he’s dead but I’m alive!’ But the more intimate of Iván Ilých’s acquaintances, his so-called friends, could not help thinking also that they would now have to fulfil the very tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and paying a visit of condolence to the widow.

Fëdor Vasílievich and Peter Ivánovich had been his nearest acquaintances. Peter Ivánovich had studied law with Iván Ilých and had considered himself to be under obligations to him.

Having told his wife at dinner-time of Iván Ilých’s death, and of his conjecture that it might be possible to get her brother transferred to their circuit, Peter Ivánovich sacrificed his usual nap, put on his evening clothes, and drove to Iván Ilých’s house.

At the entrance stood a carriage and two cabs. Leaning against the wall in the hall downstairs near the cloak-stand was a coffin-lid covered with cloth of gold, ornamented with gold cord and tassels, that had been polished up with metal powder. Two ladies in black were taking off their fur cloaks. Peter Ivánovich recognized one of them as Iván Ilých’s sister, but the other was a stranger to him. His colleague Schwartz was just coming downstairs, but on seeing Peter Ivánovich enter he stopped and winked at him, as if to say: ‘Iván Ilých has made a mess of things – not like you and me.’

Schwartz’s face with his Piccadilly whiskers, and his slim figure in evening dress, had as usual an air of elegant solemnity which contrasted with the playfulness of his character and had a special piquancy here, or so it seemed to Peter Ivánovich.

Peter Ivánovich allowed the ladies to precede him and slowly followed them upstairs. Schwartz did not come down but remained where he was, and Peter Ivánovich understood that he wanted to arrange where they should play bridge that evening. The ladies went upstairs to the widow’s room, and Schwartz with seriously compressed lips but a playful look in his eyes, indicated by a twist of his eyebrows the room to the right where the body lay.