The
Death of Ivan Ilyich cuenta la historia de un juez, y sus
sufrimientos y muerte de una enfermedad terminal en la Rusia del siglo 19. Al final
algo sobre Obeisance
… At the entrance stood a carriage
and two cabs. Leaning against the wall in the hall downstairs near the
cloakstand 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 Ivanovich recognized one of them
as Ivan Ilych's sister, but the other
was a stranger to him. His colleague Schwartz was just coming downstairs, but
on seeing Peter Ivanovich enter he stopped and winked at him, as if to say:
"Ivan Ilych 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 Ivanovich.
Peter Ivanovich allowed the
ladies to precede him and slowly followed them upstairs. Schwartz did not come
down but remained where he was, and Peter Ivanovich 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.
Peter Ivanovich, like everyone
else on such occasions, entered feeling uncertain what he would have to do. All
he knew was that at such times it is always safe to cross oneself. But he was
not quite sure whether one should make obseisances
while doing so. He therefore adopted a middle course. On entering the room he
began crossing himself and made a slight movement resembling a bow. At the same
time, as far as the motion of his head and arm allowed, he surveyed the room.
Two young men --apparently nephews, one of whom was a high-school pupil --were leaving
the room, crossing themselves as they did so. An old woman was standing
motionless, and a lady with strangely arched eyebrows was saying something to her in a whisper. A
vigorous, resolute Church Reader, in a frock-coat, was reading something in a
loud voice with an expression that precluded any contradiction. The butler's
assistant, Gerasim, stepping lightly in front of Peter Ivanovich, was
strewing something on the floor. Noticing
this, Peter Ivanovich was immediately aware of a faint odour of a decomposing
body.
The last time he had called on
Ivan Ilych, Peter Ivanovich had seen Gerasim in the study. Ivan Ilych had been
particularly fond of him and he was performing the duty of a sick nurse.
Peter Ivanovich continued to
make the sign of the cross slightly inclining his head in an intermediate
direction between the coffin, the Reader, and the icons on the table in a
corner of the room. Afterwards, when it seemed to him that this movement of his
arm in crossing himself had gone on too long, he stopped and began to look at
the corpse.
The dead man lay, as dead men
always lie, in a specially heavy way, his rigid limbs sunk in the soft cushions
of the coffin, with the head forever bowed on the pillow. His yellow waxen brow
with bald patches over his sunken temples was thrust up in the way peculiar to
the dead, the protruding nose seeming to press on the upper lip. He was much
changed and grown even thinner since Peter Ivanovich had last seen him, but, as
is always the case with the dead, his face was handsomer and above all more
dignified than when he was alive. The expression on the face said that what was
necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly. Besides this there was
in that expression a reproach and a warning to the living. This warning seemed
to Peter Ivanovich out of place, or at least not applicable to him. He felt a certain
discomfort and so he hurriedly crossed himself once more and turned and went out of the door --too
hurriedly and too regardless of propriety, as he himself was aware.
Schwartz was waiting for him
in the adjoining room with legs spread wide apart and both hands toying with
his top-hat behind his back. The mere sight of that playful, well-groomed, and
elegant figure refreshed Peter Ivanovich. He felt that Schwartz was above all
these happenings and would not surrender to any depressing influences… (The Death of Ivan Ilyich, to listen to the story from LibriVox)
Para saber
Obeisance:
Demonstración de una actitud obediente, especialmente al hacer la reverencia.
Act of obeying
from Old French obeissance, from
Latin oboedire. Sense in English altered
late 14 c. “to bending of the body as a gesture of submission or respect by
confusion with abaisance.
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