Three Deaths (Tolstoy)
Short summary
Russia, autumn, presumably 1850s. A wealthy lady was traveling by carriage with her maid, desperately trying to reach Italy for her health. She suffered from consumption and grew increasingly irritable.
At a posting station, while the lady refused to leave her carriage, a young driver named Seryoga visited a dying peasant lying on the stove in the drivers' hut.
Seryoga asked Uncle Fyodor for his boots since he wouldn't need them anymore.
You take the boots, Seryoga... Only buy me a stone when I die, do you hear? Thanks, uncle, so I'll take them; and as to the stone, ay, ay, I'll buy it.
The lady died at home in spring, surrounded by family and priests, and received a grand stone monument. Uncle Fyodor died quietly that night on the stove. Seryoga never bought the promised stone, and only green grass marked Fyodor's grave.
Detailed summary by chapters
Chapter titles are editorial.
Chapter 1. The dying ladys journey
On a grey autumn day, two carriages traveled rapidly along a muddy road. In the first carriage sat a dying lady and her maid. The lady was pale and thin, swaying weakly on her cushions with her eyes closed, coughing inwardly. She wore a white nightcap and had fair, pomaded hair parted straight under it. Her face showed fatigue, irritation, and habitual suffering.
Her maid sat beside her, plump and healthy-looking with shining red cheeks and quick black eyes that watched the fields flying past, then glanced timidly at her mistress.
The lady became irritated when her maid's cloak brushed against her knees, snapping at Matryosha to move away and not touch her with her bundles. When they passed a village church, both women crossed themselves. At the posting station, the lady's husband and doctor emerged from the second carriage to check on her condition.
While the men went inside to eat and drink wine, the doctor privately told the husband about his wife's hopeless condition. The doctor was blunt about her prospects:
A person can't live with no lungs, and the lungs can't grow again. It's distressing and terrible, but what's one to do? My duty and yours is simply to see that her end should be as easy as possible.
The husband tried to convince his wife to return home, but she refused, insisting that if she had listened to him earlier, she would already be in Berlin and well. When he mentioned the possibility of dying at home, she became terrified and began to cry, but remained determined to continue the journey abroad.
Chapter 2. The drivers death at the posting station
At the posting station, a young driver named Seryoga went into the drivers' hut to ask a favor from a sick man lying on the stove. The hut was hot, stifling, and smelled of human beings, baking bread, and sheepskins. On the stove lay a dying peasant driver wrapped in sheepskins.
Seryoga asked Uncle Fyodor for his new boots, since his own were worn through. The dying man, after drinking some water and coughing violently, agreed to give him the boots in exchange for a promise. When Seryoga asked what he wanted in return, Fyodor made a simple request about his burial arrangements. The cook angrily complained about the sick man taking up space and coughing constantly.
That night, Uncle Fyodor died quietly on the stove. The next morning, Nastasya discovered his death after having a prophetic dream where she saw him chopping wood and appearing healthy. Since Fyodor had no relatives, having come from distant parts, he was buried in the new graveyard beyond the copse.
Chapter 3. The ladys death at home
Spring had arrived in the town where the dying lady now lay in her house. Outside, streams gurgled, buds swelled on trees, and sparrows chattered, but inside the house, straw was laid in front of the entrance - a sign of impending death. The lady's husband, an elderly cousin, and a priest waited outside her room while her mother wept bitterly in a corner.
The cousin went in to prepare the dying woman for her end, speaking skillfully about death. The lady accepted her fate as a Christian, acknowledging her sins but trusting in God's mercy. She received the last sacrament from the priest and felt momentarily peaceful. However, she soon became irritated again, insisting on trying folk healers instead of doctors:
How merciful is God! Is it not true? Is He not merciful and almighty? Then suddenly something seemed to recur to her mind... those doctors don't know anything; there are simple healers...
That evening, the lady died. Her body lay in a coffin in the drawing-room while a deacon read psalms aloud. The bright candlelight fell on her pale face and the stone-like folds of her shroud. Her face remained stern and solemn in death, and the narrator wondered if she understood the grand words being read over her:
The face of the dead woman was stern and solemn. Nothing stirred the pure, cold brow and the firmly set lips. She was all attention. But did she even now understand those grand words?
Chapter 4. The trees death in the forest
A month later, a stone monument marked the lady's grave, but Uncle Fyodor's grave remained unmarked. The cook at the station reminded Seryoga of his promise to buy a gravestone, threatening that the dead man would return to haunt him. Seryoga decided to cut a wooden cross from the forest instead. Early one morning, he took his axe and went into the woods where everything was still and peaceful, covered in dew.