The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year (17 page)

The directness of the man, the willingness to speak his emotions, his thoughts, clearly and boldly, has never ceased to shock me. I have, indeed, loved him as dearly as one can love another man.

The matter of his will continues to torment us all. The great novels, his diaries, and correspondence remain in the hands of Sofya Andreyevna. Far from seeing that this work receive the widest dissemination among the people, she wants to ensure that it can be published only in the most expensive and, for her, most profitable editions. Alas, she has Leo Nikolayevich cornered, and he cannot see a way around her.

I, however, shall propose that he make me the executor of his work. I can produce it cheaply and distribute it to the muzhiks. This will be the grandest of gifts to the Russian people.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam
, as the Jesuits say.

I felt quite faint with anticipation as the troika wobbled along the muddy road to the front door of Kochety. We had barely come to a halt when Leo Nikolayevich rushed out to greet me, his face full of expectation and love. I was, as ever, overwhelmed by my dear friend’s affection, so childlike and unqualified as we embraced, his face wet with tears. Indeed, my driver was embarrassed, turning away from us.

Perhaps those years I spent in England are at fault, but I confess that open displays of emotion unsettle me. Though I tried to respond to Leo Nikolayevich in kind, I shrank from him instinctively.

We went immediately to my room to talk over various publishing projects. Leo Nikolayevich expressed his satisfaction with young Bulgakov, whom I have come to distrust. He has been sending the most idiotic, unhelpful reports from Yasnaya Polyana. He is vain enough to imagine that I should actually want to hear his running commentary on Tolstoyan texts.

Although I tried, delicately, to bring the conversation to the matter of his will, Leo Nikolayevich sensed the drift of my language and emphasized his commitment to Sofya Andreyevna.

‘I couldn’t do it,’ he said, his voice faltering.

I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I will never ask you to do anything against your better judgment. You must trust me.’

‘I trust you entirely,’ he said, standing, putting his arms around me, kissing me on either cheek. ‘Always, my friend.’

I told him that I had recently bought a new house, near Moscow, in Meshcherskoye. It is a lovely, secluded little estate, purchased with an inheritance recently passed on from a distant uncle. I said that he must come very soon to see it, since I have assembled a group of Tolstoyans – young men mostly, from the university – who will live there with me and help me in the work at hand. To my astonishment, he accepted instantly.

‘I shall come soon. In a few weeks!’ he said. ‘Perhaps Sasha will come with us. She is doing so well, you know. Recovering in the Crimea. Her doctor has written a most encouraging letter.’

The poor, dear man. I held him close to me, and we kissed once more on either cheek. For a long moment, we encountered each other with the rarest intimacy. Then we heard the rustle of carriage wheels, dogs barking, and the shouts of many servants. Soon the shrill voice of Sofya Andreyevna rose above the clatter: defiant, self-righteous, commanding.

‘Sonya!’ said Leo Nikolayevich, sucking in his lower lip. ‘She has found us, I’m afraid. I half-expected her.’

I touched him on the wrist. ‘You must come to me alone at Meshcherskoye,’ I said. ‘Forbid her to come. Do you understand?’

‘That cannot be done.’

‘It can!’ I insisted. ‘It would be good for her. She doesn’t realize it, but it would benefit her marriage. A husband and wife sometimes have to put time as well as distance between themselves to survive.’

He looked at me with his sad, large eyes and said nothing. I have to make him understand.

He has betrayed me again. I returned from Moscow with Andrey and discovered that he had stolen off to Kochety. I ran straight to the pond. I wanted to end my life, to make him regret everything he has ever done to me. It was midday, but the world seemed empty. No people. Not a muzhik in the field. Not a bird on a black branch. The air was empty.

I lay on the bank, where the moss is thick as suede, rubbing my face in a patch of grass. Water was seething, rising through the knobby roots of alders, the willows, the black weeds. I listened, hoping to learn something by keeping still. Wondering: Should I die? Must I die?

It is always worst in spring, this feeling that I must die. Worse than in winter, which is bad enough. Snow is mercifully blank. It has no story. It does not jab at me like the blood rose, the gelder rose, the prickly thorn.

My nerves are bad now. Even last week, in Moscow, I burst into tears when a houseguest, hoping to please me, entered the front hall with fresh flowers. ‘For you, Countess,’ he said. ‘Take them back!’ I shouted to the man. ‘I don’t want your flowers!’

I wish I were the wind, invisible, circulating without body, without intent.

Lyovochka thinks that I do not love God. That God means nothing to me. But I prayed, at the pond’s edge, digging my face in the moss, in a patch of grass beside the moss: ‘God, my God … Why hast Thou forsaken me?’

I rolled onto my back. I let the sun finger my body. I spread my legs to it, the godly sun, its knife, its blade of light. It was hot on my things, and I found myself laughing and weeping.

I would not die today. No, I would not die. I would go to Kochety, at once. I would take back my Lyovochka.

I summoned the maids and a driver. Andrey said we would ride through the night if necessary. I would not give Lyovochka time to rewrite the will.

‘Papa is not in his right mind these days,’ Andrey said. ‘I don’t think he is capable of defending himself from those thieves he calls disciples.’

I kissed Andrey on both cheeks. I bowed my head to him. He is such a fine son. I wish all my children had turned out like him. He does not play at false modesty, at make-believe chastity, at pseudo-religious piety.

I went to my room to prepare for the journey, but before doing anything I wrote the truth of things in my diary. Otherwise, they will read and believe the diaries of Lyovochka and Chertkov. For all I know, even the parlor maids are keeping diaries. They watch me slyly as I pass, smiling behind my back.

We left for Kochety after dinner. My heart was palpitating the whole way, the pulse reaching extraordinary and life-threatening levels. I broke into tears, off and on, though Andrey was patient. He understands me so well. He knows that there is no moral reason for going along with Lyovochka’s schemes for giving our property to the masses, who would not know what to do with it anyway. Chertkov’s notions are all calculated to destroy me. And our family. There is nothing more pathetic than impoverished aristocrats.

We arrived just before lunch the following day, having slept badly on the train in cramped sleepers (so much for first-class service!). It was as I suspected. Vladimir Grigorevich was there, wringing his puffy hands. He was standing beside my husband on the steps, gloating over his possession.

‘What a pleasant surprise,’ he said, taking my hand.

‘I’m always happy to make you happy,’ I said.

We stabbed each other with our eyes, taking care not to lose our artificial smiles.

I had barely stepped into the house when Lyovochka and Chertkov began to whisper and sneer like schoolgirls. Like lovers …

It’s unnatural for a man of my husband’s age to cluck and coo over a beastly younger disciple. Whenever I suggest as much, Lyovochka becomes irate, irrational, even hysterical. Whenever I act from powerful and genuine feelings, they call me ‘a lunatic.’ When Lyovochka does the same, he is called ‘a genius.’

Tanya’s lunch was formal, with waiters in white jackets hovering behind our chairs. Sukhotin presided like an Oriental potentate. ‘You are looking so well,’ he kept saying, which made me wonder how frightful, in fact, I must look.

Andrey talked with animation about land resources and the latest measure taken by the government to extort money from the land-owning classes, who end up paying for everything – as usual. It is no wonder I have so little money. Count Generosity gives away everything he earns while our estates bring in less each year, partly because of poor management and servants who steal whatever they can lay their greedy hands on. Is it any wonder I get frantic when I think of his giving away the copyrights to his work?

I spoke of the unfairness of these new taxes, too, expecting at least a pleasant nod from my husband. Instead, he sulked, looking up occasionally at Vladimir Grigorevich as if to say, ‘You’re quite right. The woman is intolerable. Just as you said. A bitch.’

I don’t know why everyone puts up with that man, with his pointy little beard, his reptilian eyes going their separate ways. He dandles his paunch with a fidgety hand as if it were a treasure.

After lunch, my husband spent the afternoon on horseback beside his lover, riding through the woods where nobody could see them – in Prince Golitsyn’s park, seven versts from Kochety. I could see them in my mind, like satyrs, scampering about in the dark brush. I tried to banish these images, telling myself how irrational they were, but they would not go away. I could feel my heart racing, my temples pulsing like the throat of a frog.

It began to rain not long after their departure. A damp chill blew through the house, which grew terribly dark. I said to Tanya, ‘You know, a man of your father’s age can easily catch his death of cold.’ I could think of a dozen cases in point.

‘Mama, you fret too much,’ she said, coldly. ‘Vladimir Grigorevich is with him. They will surely take shelter in an isba if the rain continues.’

‘Nobody listens to me anymore,’ I said.

Tanya refused to notice that I had said anything at all. I realized how blessedly lucky we are that she no longer lives with us. Her pretensions to levelheadedness would be more than I could bear. And she has this accusatory little mouth that puckers up when she doesn’t get her way. Who could believe she is my own daughter?

Lyovochka arrived home safely, and I was glad for this, though I had to suffer Tanya’s smugness.

That night, he came into my bedroom near midnight. I was reading the Bible, the Book of Ruth, with several candles burning on a table beside my bed.

‘Good evening, dear,’ I said. ‘Are you unable to sleep?’

He bent close and kissed me. It was not a sincere kiss, but at least he kissed me. I half-wondered if he was going to ask for a sexual favor. At his age, you would think he’d be over such requests. But one never knows with him. There’s no goat like an old goat.

‘Sit on the bed,’ I said. ‘Here.’ I moved over to make room for him.

I knew something weighed on his mind. He had that stony look that overwhelms him whenever he is about to make a confession or create a scene. It made my stomach flutter.

‘Our life together has become intolerable,’ he said, speaking to the wall. He never looks directly at me when he makes cruel remarks.

‘That is pure, foolish nonsense,’ I said. ‘We have had some disagreements, but they are no more than any married couple experiences. I love you.’

I probably should have said nothing. It is sometimes best to ignore his facetious prattling.

‘You and I no longer agree on anything: neither the land question nor the religious question.’

‘We are not heads of competing states,’ I said. ‘We are man and wife. Do we have to agree on such questions?’

‘The life I lead is an embarrassment to me and my friends. I am a hypocrite.’

‘You don’t mean a word of that, Lyovochka. That is Chertkov speaking. You are not yourself tonight.’

‘I don’t know how I can continue.’ His lips trembled as he spoke. I knew it was true.

‘Do you love me?’ I reached out for his wrinkled hand. It was as cold as marble, and as veined.

‘I have never not loved you.’

‘Come, Lyovochka,’ I said. ‘You fill your head with nonsense. Do your duty. God asks nothing more of you. Your duty is, first, to respect your family. There are obligations that come before selfish whims. All you can think about is yourself, did you know that?’

He covered his face with his hands and wept, his shoulders shaking. He seemed like a young child, suddenly, so helpless and without control. It was pitiful. I found myself, to my amazement, weeping, too. We each cried on the other’s shoulder.

‘There now,’ I said. ‘It’s not so bad, is it?’

He stared at me, his eyes hollow, red as coals. He shook his head. ‘It will never work,’ he said. ‘I cannot continue.’

Slowly, he composed himself and left the room. I said nothing.

I no longer understand my life. I want to die.

I think I could easily have stayed in the Crimea, living beside Varvara Mikhailovna. I had a dream there in which her head was deep in my lap as we lay beside the water, a salt green sea, with waves splattering over low rocks. One night, past midnight, I walked in the fields with her, a hot wind filling our heads, our lungs. The stars fell like snowflakes in the high grass. I told her about my dream, and she hugged me, and we wept. We lay in the grass, shawls drawn up about our shoulders, and slept. When dawn broke the horizon was pink as flesh, a faint wind stirring the field like froth. I was happy.

As the weeks turned, we grew brown in the sun. Our hair cut short like boys’, we ran in the sandy woods near the big house that Count Minsky had loaned to us. It was full of servants, and the samovar was never empty or cool. We drank wine, too, a light Bordeaux stored in the count’s cellar. It made us feel naughty and giddy.

I recovered my strength as the fever passed. My throat cleared, and my head no longer throbbed. I felt whole again, especially with Varvara beside me. I felt released from a terrible but invisible enclosure.

At Yasnaya Polyana, she would never have felt free to sleep beside me, but there it seemed perfectly natural. Varvara had been sent to look after me, hadn’t she? Young girls – children, really – will often sleep together. I daresay it was childish of us. But we enjoyed the silliness. I do not know what Count Minsky’s servants thought, but I did not ask.