The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year (18 page)

When I was still suffering from fever, Varvara rubbed my back with alcohol each night before I slept. We soon realized that, even without a fever, back rubbing is a pleasurable activity. I would undress slowly by the fire as it sputtered in the black grate and flickered against the white walls with Varvara watching, nodding, and occasionally smiling. She would hum quietly or, sometimes, sing a Bulgarian folk tune that she loves about two young girls in a field.

Naked, I would walk to the bed and lie on the cool, puffy quilt. It chilled my body, but Varvara’s hands were silky and warm. She has a lovely way of kneading the flesh, of finding the muscles to the left and right of the spinal column, of touching a hidden crevice between the vertebrae. She would work the soft flesh of my buttocks, take one thigh, then the other, in her large hands. Her fingers, pressing, seemed to enter my anklebones, to penetrate my arches.

After a long massage, she would collapse beside me and pull the red-and-green patchwork quilt over our heads. We would fall asleep in a short time – a dreamless, wordless sleep in a bed so large it might have been an arctic snowfield (except for the fire between us).

I would have stayed longer if I had not been worried about Papa. I missed him badly, more than I’d have guessed. And he cannot cope easily with Mama, who has grown worse over the years. With reluctance, we went back to Yasnaya Polyana toward the end of May.

Papa had returned the week before from Kochety, where he’d met with Chertkov. He is always buoyant when he has seen or is about to see Chertkov. He loves Vladimir Grigorevich as I love Varvara Mikhailovna. I would never begrudge him this.

Despite Mama, my return home was exhilarating. Papa wept when I came through the door, embracing me for such a long time. He never used to weep so easily. I was afraid for him.

He could think about nothing but going to Chertkov’s house at Meshcherskoye in two weeks. Chertkov insists that he continue to ride, but Mama invariably tries to stop him. He wants to think, Papa says. ‘Think about what?’ she asks. ‘Why can’t you think in your house, like everyone else?’ We all laugh, except Mama.

I was typing some letters for Papa a few days ago when Mama came barging into the room without knocking.

‘Here I am,’ she said, ‘an outcast in my own home.’

I refused to respond.

‘Nobody seems to care that I am sixty-six years old,’ she continued. ‘A woman of sixty-six cannot look after this estate. Do you hear me? I’m run ragged. I have no time for myself!’ Her whining voice rose to a most unattractive pitch. ‘I cannot manage it any longer! Don’t you see that? Can’t anyone hear what I’m trying to say?’

‘So who is asking you to do it?’ came a voice in the doorway. It was Papa, grizzly and wild. His eyes sputtered like coals stirred by a poker.

‘You hate me, don’t you? Tell the truth,’ she said. ‘In front of your daughter, in God’s sight, say exactly what is true!’

The light went out in Papa’s eyes, and his whole being sagged. ‘Go away from here, Sonya. Your nerves will ruin you if you don’t. Dushan thinks you need a period of rest.’ He turned to me. ‘Tell her, Sasha, how the Crimea helped.’

I tried to echo his sentiments, but Mama broke in.

‘You’d like nothing better than to drive me away. You want to get rid of me. That’s all you can think of.’

Papa looked disconsolate. ‘You always think the worst of me, don’t you?’

‘I know exactly what to think of you. I think what is true. I’m not ignorant, though you and your friends haven’t quite understood that.’

‘You’re mad,’ he said, and walked away, fuming.

The next day another incident occurred that points up the difference between my parents. Last year Mama hired a young Circassian guard, Akhmet, to protect our property. Everyone knows that Leo Tolstoy lives here, that he is wealthy and generous. Beggars, revolutionaries, students, monks and visionaries, crooks – they all descend on us, and we do need protection of a sort. But Papa hates the sight of Akhmet, who takes his job too seriously and struts about the grounds in a formal black tunic with a sword at his side. He insists on wearing a pompous Persian-lamb cap, which he tilts to one side as if to taunt us. He refuses to let strangers ‘wander about the Master’s property,’ as he puts it. They daren’t even pick wildflowers in Zasyeka Wood.

The man is brutish. I heard from Sergeyenko, in fact, that he has actually molested married women in the village.

The trouble started when Akhmet seized a local muzhik, Vlasov, who had ‘stolen’ a sapling from the wood. Akhmet tied him brutally with a piece of hemp and dragged him on the ground back to the house, where Mama scolded the peasant harshly and said that if he were caught again he would be banished from the Master’s property.

Papa unexpectedly stepped into the kitchen, drawn by the commotion. ‘Do you expect me to stand quietly aside while you mishandle a good friend?’ Papa asked her.

‘He’s a muzhik, dear,’ Mama said. ‘You never did understand social distinctions.’

‘He’s a human being, and we have known each other for many years.’

Mama objected that Vlasov was caught stealing, and that if everyone thought it possible to steal what they liked, there would be no end to theft at Yasnaya Polyana. ‘That’s just like you,’ she said. ‘You want to give everything that we have away. If your grandchildren end up as paupers, it will mean nothing to you. You, of course, never wanted for anything. You have been pampered and protected your entire life, and you don’t even realize it.’

‘Vlasov is free to help himself to whatever he needs,’ Papa said, barely under control. He pointed to Akhmet with a shaky finger. ‘And I insist that you dismiss your foolish guard at once.’ I thought he might swoon.

Later, I found Papa in his study, his head buried in his hands. He was like a world drained of light.

‘It’s very painful,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘Your mother was absolutely right about me. I have lived my life in a glass house, utterly protected, coddled. I know nothing of the world.’

‘That’s foolishness, Papa,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t pay attention to her.’

I kissed him on the head and rubbed his neck.

That day he did not come down to lunch.

Mama looked at me and said, ‘He is torturing himself and he is torturing me. Why can’t he behave in a normal way? Everything with him is hysterics.’

In the days that followed, Papa declined swiftly. He would sit in his study for hours at a time, writing nothing. His diary straggled off into incoherent ramblings. One day he came home from a long walk in Zasyeka Wood, his face livid, the sweat standing on his brow. I put him to bed and called Dushan Makovitsky, who took his pulse.

‘It is weak, I’m afraid,’ he said, with the gloom in his voice one expects of Dushan Makovitsky.

Papa had fallen into a deep sleep, his jaw open. He was breathing roughly through the mouth, a slight membrane, a bubble, glistening on his lips. Occasionally, his tongue darted out between his gums.

Mama, behind us, began to cry softly into a scarf.

‘Stop it,’ I said to her. ‘You’ll wake him up.’

We kept a vigil at his bedside while he slept. When he woke, an hour later, he said, ‘I must speak to Vladimir Grigorevich. Ask him to wait for me in my study.’

I squeezed his hand, now limp and wet. ‘He is not here, Papa,’ I whispered. ‘He’s in Meshcherskoye. You will see him there next week.’

What brought about Papa’s recovery, I suspect, was the upcoming trip to Meshcherskoye. He simply had to see Chertkov again. And Mama, to my amazement, announced that she was not going with us. She knew Papa wanted a few days of peace beside his ‘beloved Chertkov.’

I began to worry about Mama. She seems so fragile and withdrawn. And Papa worried, too. It was most unlike us.

‘We can’t possibly leave her here alone,’ he said. ‘Of course I’d rather go without her. But this won’t do.’

‘Let me ask Varvara to stay with her. She’ll alert us if anything goes wrong. Please, Papa.’

It was hard to convince him, but he agreed when

Varvara seemed happy enough to stay behind. She does not, herself, find Chertkov’s company amusing. ‘He is a bore,’ she said. ‘And he hates women.’

The visit to Meshcherskoye, for me, was not the same without Varvara. It’s painful for me to separate from her, even for a brief time. But I promised to write every day. Somehow, the thought of being able to write affectionate letters made the separation bearable, even attractive.

The night before we left, I stole into Varvara’s room when the house was sleeping and lay my head on her shoulder; I nestled beside her for an hour or more, listening to her breathe, watching the rhythmical swell of her breast like waves cresting offshore, plunging onto shingle, gathering, cresting again. Her hand folded a lock of my hair backward and forward. It was lovelier than sleep.

The next morning we left on horseback, riding to the Tula station in a small pack like a gang of thieves. There were three of us besides Papa: Dushan Makovitsky, Bulgakov, and a servant, Ilya Vasilyevna. Papa led us forward like a Cossack charging into battle.

Papa reined in his horse at the prison in Tula, a small white building with tiny, depressing windows covered with an iron grate. He shook his head.

‘Gusev was imprisoned there,’ Dushan Makovitsky said to Bulgakov, who wants to know everything. Dushan recalled other Tolstoyans who had spent time in that oppressive building, and Papa laughed suddenly, describing the place as his ‘very own jail.’

We rode all day in a cramped second-class compartment, arriving at Meshcherskoye in time for dinner. It is a simple house – unadorned, rather ugly. It’s dirty, too. Followers of Papa jammed the hallways, disciples recruited by Chertkov from intellectual circles in Moscow and St Petersburg, a motley band of young dreamers. Many of them are frauds. But Papa delighted in their company, pouring himself into their midst, chatting freely, answering questions, offering counsel and criticism. Attention, for him, is like sunlight on a plant. He comes alive in the warm rays.

At dinner, as is the custom with Chertkov, we all sat
en famille
, including the servants. But the servants sat gloomily at one end of the table, saying nothing. Ilya would not countenance sitting at the same table as ‘the Count’ and huddled by himself in a dark corner. Papa took him a plate of vegetables, a slice of goat cheese, and a piece of black bread. Everyone watched in awe.

‘It is like Christ washing the feet of his disciples,’ said Dushan Makovitsky in my ear, whose gift for the obvious is spectacular.

During the meal, Papa was asked what to read.

‘Disregard all literature written during the last sixty years!’ he answered.

‘What do you recommend to them?’ Vladimir Grigorevich asked. ‘Pushkin, perhaps?’ He was supremely happy, with Tolstoy at his table, his followers about him.

‘Yes, and Gogol, too. Gogol is superb. And foreign writers. I recommend Rousseau, Hugo, and Dickens. As usual, most Russians want to read only what is new. They grow quite breathless at the mention of What’s-his-name … Grut – Mut – Knut Hamsun! They rave about Ibsen and Bjørnson. But to know Rousseau and Hugo only by hearsay, by an entry in the encyclopedia!’

Normally, Papa is keen on looking things up in the encyclopedia. He has the entire Brockhaus Efron beside his desk, and he consults it almost daily. He adores reading about strange countries and customs, packing away bits of knowledge for later use. Long ago he realized that, for the sake of an argument, there is no substitute for facts. You can silence an opponent quickly with the right information. You can also command the attention of a group by citing statistics and dispensing pieces of erudition. In keeping with this, Papa soon began talking about the island of Formosa, which has interested him recently.

‘It’s an island that the Japanese have just captured,’ he explained to the company, most of whom took frantic notes, hoping to catch every utterance in their penciled scrawls. ‘Imagine! The island is full of cannibals! Eaters of human flesh!’ Papa’s eyeballs widened like saucers.

‘Cannibalism is evil,’ said Dushan Makovitsky.

Papa grinned. ‘My friend Trubetskoy says that cannibalism is a kind of civilization, too. Cannibals, you know, maintain that they eat only savages. Most of us, I think, would be included in their definition.’

There was a look of mixed confusion and mortification on all faces, though Bulgakov laughed out loud. Too loud, in fact. Chertkov’s minions do not dare laugh in his presence.

‘Leo Nikolayevich has quite a sense of humor,’ Chertkov noted with a grimace.

We had intended to stay only a week or so, but Papa showed not even the slightest interest in curbing his visit. He was enjoying himself too much. He began to write stories every morning, completing two in three days. If he were free from the tensions of Yasnaya Polyana, he might well begin writing novels again.

He also finished a preface to his
Thoughts on Life
, a collection of his work assembled by Chertkov, who never tires of that sort of thing. Reading over the preface, Vladimir Grigorevich said, ‘I like it very much, Leo Nikolayevich. But you should change one phrase. You write about the need for us to cultivate a “love of God and other beings.” What you mean, surely, is “a consciousness of God.”’

I did not like Chertkov’s presumption. He thinks he understands Papa’s work better than Papa. This is one of the things about him that annoys Mama beyond description.

I went riding with Papa and Chertkov one day, and we stopped to visit an asylum. Papa is fascinated by the insane. He says they are closer to God than we are.

Papa noted, ‘The doctors clearly regard the insane quite objectively, as medical cases, not as human beings for whom they must show pity. They are the material with which they work. I suppose it must be so, otherwise they would become demoralized.’

Everyone listened to Papa’s observations, nodding eagerly when he was done. I was a little embarrassed by their false attitude.

Papa asked the patients about their religious sentiments. He asked one gaunt, elderly man with no teeth and wild, yellow hair if he believed in God.