The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year (27 page)

‘I should also say that you seem evasive,’ she said. ‘Are you evasive?’

‘There’s no way to answer that without implicating myself.’

‘Hush!’ She put a finger to my lips. ‘No excuses. You’re better than that. You are simply trying to keep the peace around here – a perfectly Christian thing to do.’

‘You do understand me, don’t you?’

‘I hope that in sixty-six years I have learned a little something, dear Valentin Fedorovich. I am to be pitied for what I haven’t learned, perhaps.’

I saw here a glimmer of the great person she might have been, given other circumstances. The situation of life here is not conducive to sainthood, especially for a woman in Sofya Andreyevna’s position. She is torn, like me, between two points of the compass.

Through all this, I remain impressed with Leo Nikolayevich. He cannot be flattered. A few days ago, I walked down by the Voronka and came upon the bathhouse used by the family in summer, an endearing little structure made of clay and wattles. There is one plastered wall on the outside, on which visitors to the estate have inscribed their comments. I copied them in my notebook:

1. Down with capital punishment!
   
2. May the life of L. N. be prolonged for as many years
   again
   .
   
3. In token of a visit to Count L. Tolstoy, a man with an
   intellect as large as a lion
   …
   
4. Come, all you who have grown weary in the struggle.
   Here you shall find peace
   .
   
5. This hallowed but was visited by a student of the Moscow
   Geodetic School
   .
   
6. A bumble pilgrim offers his respect
   .
   
7. An admirer of the Count, now and always
   .
   
8. Glory to the great one, glory!
   
9. No one, not even Tolstoy, knows the truth
   .
   
10. After long dreaming, we have at last visited the genius
    of the human mind
    .
    
11. ‘
    Those born to crawl cannot fly.’ What can I write? All
    look pale compared to you
    .
    
12. M.
    Bolsky
    was here
    .
    

At her request, I gave Sofya Andreyevna a copy of these remarks, and she placed it on the piano in the sitting room, where Leo Nikolayevich would see it. Passing through the room, he said gruffly, ‘What is this?’

‘Comments, my dear. Mostly about you. Bulgakov copied them from the bathhouse wall.’

He picked up the paper and skimmed the comments. His lips moved slightly as he read.

‘Not interesting,’ he said, dropping it on the piano.

Biryukov has been visiting. One of Leo Nikolayevich’s most ardent disciples, he is being prosecuted by the government for possession of certain banned texts by Tolstoy. The trial begins in four weeks, and he may be sent to prison for as much as eighteen months. This is an enormous source of pain to Leo Nikolayevich, who is reluctant to have anyone suffer on his behalf.

This afternoon he went for a long ride on Delire and returned looking haggard. He said he would go to his room for a nap – not his usual habit.

We waited for him to sit down to dinner, but when he hadn’t emerged from his room by seven we began eating without him. Sofya Andreyevna ladled out the soup, a hot chicken broth with fat carrots floating in it, then excused herself to check up on her husband. It was unlike him, she said, to miss a meal. None of us spoke, though we continued to eat. It is always nerve-racking when an old man does not appear on time.

Sofya Andreyevna came back wringing her hands. It seems that when she went in, he was sitting up on the edge of his bed. He looked pallid and claimed he was not hungry and would simply go to bed without dinner. His pulse was slightly rapid, and a fine sweat beaded his forehead and made his cheeks appear slick.

‘Do you think he’s all right?’ asked Sergey. He, like his sister Tanya, was visiting for a few days, drawn home by the crisis between his parents. They all imagine it’s possible to do something.

‘His eyes looked vacant,’ she said. ‘I think he’s about to have an attack.’

After a few sips of broth, she stood again. ‘I must go to him.’

When she left, Sergey and Tanya exchanged a look of annoyance. Why couldn’t she let the poor man rest?

Their mother reappeared with a ghastly look. ‘Go quickly, Dushan Petrovich! He is unconscious, and mumbling – God knows what is wrong!’ She crossed herself several times and knelt on the floor.

Everyone leaped from his place at the table, following Dushan Petrovich, who had run from the room as soon as he saw the flash of fear in Sofya Andreyevna’s eyes.

The bedroom was dark, though a candle glimmered on the small bed table, its flame nearly extinguished. Leo Nikolayevich lay on the spread, his jaw quivering. He made queer, inarticulate, lowing sounds. Everyone stood by, dumbfounded.

We watched as Dushan Makovitsky undressed and covered him with a wool blanket. The old man’s eyes were closed, but he struggled to talk, his brow contracted, his cheeks blown. He began to work his jaws as though he were chewing.

‘He will probably sleep now,’ Dushan said. ‘You might as well finish your dinner. I’ll stay with him.’

‘No, I’ll stay,’ said Biryukov. This was unexpected. But he feels intensely loyal to the man; for his sake he would endure prison.

‘Call me if there is any change,’ Dushan said. ‘And take his pulse every five minutes.’

We descended quietly into the dining room and resumed our meal. Hardly a word was said. I don’t think we had quite finished dessert when Biryukov came rushing into the room shouting for Dushan Makovitsky.

Once again, we raced upstairs. Leo Nikolayevich had gone into convulsions, though by the time we reached the bedroom they were subsiding. Still, his legs twitched violently and his face appeared distorted by pain; the edges of his lips were drawn upward in a grimace. His fingers opened and closed mechanically like the mandibles of an insect.

Dushan Makovitsky gave orders like a military captain: ‘Hurry! Go down and get hot-water bottles for his feet. We should put a mustard plaster on his calves, too. And coffee! Bring some hot coffee!’

Amid the commotion, Dushan remained cool and dispassionate, a scientist through and through. Sofya Andreyevna stood with her back against the wall, praying, her eyelids red and swollen, half-closed.

Awhile later, covered in plasters and cold packs, Leo Nikolayevich sat up in bed with our help. The worst seemed to be over. He was trying to speak.

‘Society …,’ he said. ‘Society concerning three … concerning three … make a note of this.’

‘He is delirious,’ Dushan Makovitsky said.

‘Must read!’ Leo Nikolayevich declared, abruptly. Then, in a low, phlegm-clogged voice: ‘Wisdom … wisdom … wisdom.’

What a grievous and unnatural thing to witness, a man of luminous intelligence reduced to blather. Nevertheless, even in his confusion, his central concerns as a human being boiled to the surface of his brain’s caldron.

Without warning, the convulsions started up again, a succession of seizures that racked his entire body, as if he’d been struck by bolts of lightning. After each seizure, he lay shaking, trembling, sweating.

Dushan Makovitsky held down his shoulders during the worst convulsions, while Biryukov grasped his legs. Following orders, I massaged his calves whenever the writhing stopped. He suffered five attacks in a row, the fourth being especially violent, tossing him crosswise on the bed. We could barely restrain him.

When the worst appeared over, Sofya Andreyevna knelt by the bed and clutched his feet. ‘Dearest Lord, not now! Don’t let him die now!’

Tanya put a hand on her mother’s shoulder and said, in a kindly way, ‘Let’s go downstairs, Mama. He should rest now.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Sofya Andreyevna said. ‘If he dies, you will lose a father. But I will have killed a man.’

Her words drilled through the dark.

‘You must all go down,’ Dushan Makovitsky said. ‘I shall keep watch over him myself.’

Leo Nikolayevich was not ready to die, however. By ten o’clock, he had nearly recovered, though he didn’t try to stand. He sipped tea and asked that Dushan Makovitsky read to him from the Gospels.

I listened, quietly, at the door.

‘A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.’ The words sang in my heart, they were so beautiful, so perfectly simple. ‘By this all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have loved one to another.’

Leo Nikolayevich echoed Dushan in a hoarse, low voice.

Now I lay in bed awake, unable to relax. It had been harrowing to observe the signature of death on that dear, wrinkled face. As always, my thoughts turned to Masha in Petersburg. I lit the candle on my table and wrote a letter to her:

‘Mother, you’re jealous of him,’ Sasha said to me yesterday. ‘That’s the problem.’

Where is that girl’s mind? Of course I’m jealous of him! Why should I share him with vagabonds and mountebanks, money grubbers and frauds? Yet I must try to ensure that he is not continually upset. The tension will kill him. It is my duty, as his wife, to see that he lives in a calm atmosphere.

The day after Lyovochka’s attack I told Sasha that she and Varvara Mikhailovna could return home. It was killing her father to have his little briar rose removed from him. And there was no telling what plots she might hatch with Chertkov once removed from my view. So I made a spectacle of myself, standing on the wooden steps at Telyatinki, begging forgiveness of my daughter and her friend. They appeared genuinely dumbfounded. I loved it.

Sasha is a sentimental girl, the kind who weeps over the death of a toad; she burst into tears at the sight of me, and we embraced like long-lost sisters. Even Varvara Mikhailovna, who has the sensitivity of a granite monument, shed a few lightly manufactured tears and hugged me.

‘A family gathering!’ said Chertkov, dripping poison as he stepped from the shadows. Light glanced from his slick, bald forehead. He was redolent of scent – a womanly affectation appropriate to a man of his Greekish ways.

‘It is good to see you, Vladimir Grigorevich.’

‘Always a pleasure, to be sure.’

‘I would like you to visit us tomorrow. Will you come for lunch?’

He thanked me without a trace of his usual irony, a marvelous performance.

The offer was rash, however. I should have known better. He contaminates the ground he walks on. And there is the matter of habit. If the idea were planted that he could visit us without difficulty, he would turn up every day.

When I heard the approach of his carriage, my pulse began to race: 142! I peered out the window of my bedroom with binoculars. Lyovochka stood on the front steps, happily waiting to receive his disciple. I had asked him not to embrace the man. That is more than I can bear. But he could not hide the joy on his face; he looked like a young bride who has just spied her lover in the distance. A disgusting thing for the servants to see!

How I managed I shall never know. With all my strength, I maintained a cool civility, inquiring after his mother and wife, inwardly counting the minutes till that scoundrel was out of my house. When he had finally gone, I begged Lyovochka to make this the last time I had to endure that malevolent presence. He unexpectedly agreed to write to Chertkov and his wife, suggesting that this experiment in reconciliation was premature. Some time must pass before they attempt another visit.