Friends came sometimes to play cards. They sat down to the card-table; they shuffled and dealt the new cards. Diamonds were led and followed by diamonds, the seven. His partner said, “Can’t trump,” and played the two of diamonds. What then? Why, delightful, capital, it should have been—he had a trump hand. And suddenly Ivan Ilyitch feels that gnawing ache, that taste in his mouth, and it strikes him as something grotesque that with that he could be glad of a trump hand.
He looks at Mihail Mihailovitch, his partner, how he taps on the table with his red hand, and affably and indulgently abstains from snatching up the trick, and pushes the cards towards Ivan Ilyitch so as to give him the pleasure of taking them up, without any trouble, without even stretching out his hand. “What, does he suppose that I’m so weak that I can’t stretch out my hand?” thinks Ivan Ilyitch, and he forgets the trumps, and trumps his partner’s cards, and plays his trump hand without making three tricks; and what’s the most awful thing of all is that he sees how upset Mihail Mihailovitch is about it, while he doesn’t care a bit, and it’s awful for him to think why he doesn’t care.
They all see that he’s in pain, and say to him, “We can stop if you’re tired. You go and lie down.” Lie down? No, he’s not in the least tired; they will play the rubber. All are gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilyitch feels that it is he who has brought this gloom upon them, and he cannot disperse it. They have supper, and the party breaks up, and Ivan Ilyitch is left alone with the consciousness that his life is poisoned for him and poisons the life of others, and that this poison is not losing its force, but is continually penetrating more and more deeply into his whole existence.
And with the consciousness of this, and with the physical pain in addition, and the terror in addition to that, he must lie in his bed, often