The Last Station Read online

  Papa waved his handkerchief from the steps of Grandfather’s small manor house as the ancient coach creaked and wobbled down the dirt road. Miles down the road we came to the soft, undulating cornfields typical of the Tula region. The corn, wheat, and rye, the long, symmetrical bands of muzhiks bending over their work in happy unison rolled past, then the forest of Zasyeka, with its thick, green woodland smelling of pine and mud. We came upon the village of Yasnaya Polyana, which did not impress me. A miserable clutch of thatched huts, shaky isbas, and stone barns. The village pump, with a tin pail slung beneath the spout, was spurting muddy water. The big wooden door of the church swung wide, and a middle-aged widow in a black veil stood beside it, chattering away to a toothless old nun the size and shape of a tree stump. The widow bowed gravely at our coach as we passed, feigning deference – the typical hypocrisy of the Russian lower classes.

  Leo Tolstoy lived in his large ancestral home, which bore the same name as the village, Mama told us. Like all good teachers, she had a way of seeming enthusiastic about the obvious. She went on to explain how the count, like most young men of his rank, had been addicted to gambling. (‘Your father, of course, was the exception,’ she said.) Playing cards with an unscrupulous neighbor, he had bet the central part of his house to stay in a game. He lost, and the unforgiving neighbor actually hauled off the main body of Yasnaya Polyana, leaving the wings behind, freestanding and ridiculous.

  ‘He no longer gambles, I believe,’ Lisa said. ‘Nor does he drink overmuch. He is practically a teetotaler. And he is very devout.’ She sucked her lips into a pert rosebud that made me want to slap her. But I restrained myself, knowing what I knew about the count’s real intentions.

  ‘I’ll bet he’s worse than ever,’ Tanya said. ‘All young men drink and gamble, and Lord knows what they do with women.’

  ‘That tongue of yours is going to wag you all the way to a nunnery,’ Mama said, fussing with her hair.

  We passed between two whitewashed towers at the entrance to the grounds of Yasnaya Polyana. The big stone house that had been refashioned from the abandoned wings stood at the end of the long serpentine drive, with parallel rows of silver birches rising along it like an honor guard. The meadows beyond them looked rich and silky, spotted with buttercups. And butterflies, too! The house competed admirably with nature for our attention. It was a long house on two floors, white as alabaster, with a Greek pediment topping a veranda over the entrance. A beautiful house, I whispered to myself. I was determined to be its mistress.

  Lyovochka’s Aunt Toinette, a shriveled thing in a country dress, welcomed us. ‘Bienvenu! Comme c’est bon!’ she kept chirping. It seemed incongruous, this distinctly peasantlike woman – a real krestyonka – speaking Parisian French with almost no accent.

  Mama accepted her welcome in garbled French, which, to my ear, sounded more like Chinese. ‘Merci beaucoup! C’est une belle maison! Une belle maison! Mais oui!’ she cried.

  Lyovochka, looking red-faced and out of breath, came hurling through the door apologetic, saying that he hadn’t quite expected us. But he didn’t make us feel guilty. Like a French courtier, he kissed everyone’s hand in turn, lingering that extra moment over mine. I lit up inside, ablaze with love. I did not know where to look or what to say.

  ‘Let me show you the orchard,’ he said. It seemed odd, especially to Mama, that he wanted us to see the orchard before we toured the house itself, but Mama was not going to object.

  ‘We just adore orchards,’ she said. ‘Don’t we adore orchards, girls?’

  ‘I haven’t thought much about it,’ Lisa said. She could be so tedious.

  We paused by a thicket of bushes strung with ripe, red fruit. ‘Raspberries!’ Tanya screamed, as if she’d never seen them before.

  Lyovochka handed around pails, and we were all told to begin picking, right then and there – even Mama, who made the best of what she considered an unfortunate situation. ‘What charming raspberries,’ she said. ‘Don’t we just adore raspberries?’

  I stepped off with a pail behind one of the big bushes and had been happily, mindlessly, picking berries for a few minutes when Lyovochka sprang, like a bear, from behind a swatch of leaves.

  ‘You frighten me!’ I said.

  He took my pail away and held my hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I am.’

  ‘You should be.’

  He did not let go of my hands. ‘These are city hands,’ he said.

  He held them and looked at me for such a long time. I said, ‘Would you like a berry?’

  Like a defiant child, he plucked a berry from my pail and popped it between his coarse lips. I spotted his fat red tongue and looked away.

  ‘I must go,’ he said. And disappeared.

  Now I knew that my instincts were correct. It’s strange how one can know everything at once about the future – not the details, but the overall picture. I knew that my life would be spent here, on these grounds, with Leo Tolstoy. I also knew that I would be his harshest critic and his best friend. And that heartache lay ahead of me, unspecified but cruel.

  I carried this secret, miraculous knowledge with me, hoarded it like an amulet. It would ruin everything if they found out before the time was ripe.

  Tanya, Lisa, and I lodged together in the vaulted room on the ground floor that nowadays is crammed with stinking, uncouth disciples: insane noblemen, beggars who are proud of their fallen state, toothless nuns, idealistic students, revolutionaries, criminals, vegetarians, foreigners. The mad economist Nikolayev is here, preaching Henry George’s theory of the single tax. He slurps his soup on the linen tablecloth, splashing those to his right and left. Drankov, the cinematographer, is here, too. I don’t mind him, although he is constantly taking our picture.

  I thought Lyovochka would propose to me after dinner, but he didn’t. By the time we left, two days later, nothing had happened. Worse, he acted as though we had never exchanged a moment of intimacy. I began to doubt my perspicacity. Perhaps I had been mistaken all along? Perhaps he had behaved the same with Lisa? Even with Tanya? As we departed, I could barely fend off despair, though I maintained a cheerful countenance. I comforted myself with the fact that Lisa was more miserable than I. She wept openly as we clattered off behind a troika, and Mama scolded her. ‘He will ask you in his own good time,’ she said, disappointment curdling her voice.

  Two days later, at Grandfather’s house, Tanya wakened me. ‘It’s the count!’

  ‘You’re teasing me.’

  ‘No, it’s true! He’s come on a white horse.’

  Leave it to my Lyovochka. Grandstanding, as usual. ‘A horse,’ he once said, ‘is the symbol of the rider’s soul.’

  Grandfather welcomed him eagerly, grinning and bowing. He was so queer, with his close-shaven skull and black skullcap, a razorlike nose. His hairy fingers, like the legs of a tarantula, seemed always to be moving. His eyes were independent of each other, like fish eyes, poking out from opposite sides of his narrow head.

  Lyovochka was covered with white dust and sweat. He affected a shy, boyish grin, apologizing for his condition.

  Grandfather told him not to think twice about it. It was an honor, he said. ‘And how long did it take you, Leo Nikolayevich? It’s such a long way to come on horseback.’

  ‘Three hours. Perhaps a bit more. I was in no hurry. It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Let me get you a drink?’

  ‘That would be very kind of you, sir.’

  We huddled in the shade of the hall, listening to their exchange. I wore a muslin dress that day, a white one for summer, with a lilac-tinted rosette on the right shoulder. I trailed a long ribbon down one arm, the kind we used to call Suivez-moi, jeune bomme.

  ‘He has come for you, Lisa,’ my mother said. She could barely restrain her giddiness and pride. ‘Today is your day.’

  ‘I wouldn’t sleep with a dusty man like that,’ said Tanya to Lisa.

  Lisa turned her nose up. To give in to her sister’s taunts would b
e unbecoming of a future countess.

  The day followed a summery course of gay (though hardly extraordinary) meals, with lots of party games and silly jokes. The strain of waiting for the count to strike seemed unbearable to poor Grandfather. Mama was hardly any better. Her conversation lapsed into inanities that, fortunately, the count never noticed.

  It happened after dinner. Everyone had left the dining room but myself and the rather obviously hyperventilating count. He turned to me and said, ‘Could you wait a moment, Sofya Andreyevna? It’s so pleasant in here.’

  ‘It’s a charming room, isn’t it?’ I said, lying through my teeth.

  ‘The food is excellent here.’

  ‘Grandfather likes his food.’

  We shifted from foot to foot. Get on with it, I thought.

  ‘Come sit beside me on the sofa,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t mind that, would you?’

  I smiled and followed him to the little sofa along the side wall. He sat down first, impolitely, but his doing so allowed me to choose my position. For the sake of modesty, I left a few inches between us.

  He pulled a green, baize-covered table up to our knees and took a piece of chalk from his coat pocket. I watched him closely as he leaned over the table and began to scribble on its soft cover.

  He wrote: ‘Y.y.a.y.d.f.h.r.m.c.o.m.a.a.t.i.o.h.f.m.’

  I stared at the peculiar inscription.

  ‘Can you decipher this?’

  ‘It’s a string of letters, Leo Nikolayevich.’

  Was this some sort of after-dinner game played by the aristocracy? My stomach tightened.

  ‘I can help you,’ he said. ‘The first two y’s represent the words Your youth.’

  ‘Your youth and your desire for happiness remind me cruelly of my age and the impossibility of happiness for me,’ I cried, having reconstructed the entire sentence. It was a miracle!

  When the meaning wakened in my head, I shuddered. Everything fell clear.

  Lyovochka, meanwhile, was rubbing out what he had written and starting the little game all over again.

  This time, he wrote: ‘Y.f.i.w.a.m.f.t.L.H.m.t.c.t.’

  I knew exactly what he meant once I understood that L was for Lisa. ‘Your family is wrong about my feelings toward Lisa. Help me to clarify this.’

  An actual proposal did not follow for several weeks, but I knew now that poor Lisa was finished. He loved me alone.

  When Lyovochka visited us in Moscow in September, I gave him a story I had written. It was about a tender young girl who had a suitor called Dublitsky – an old, rather ugly nobleman. He wished, more than anything in the world, to marry her, but she wasn’t sure if she really wanted him. I don’t know why I wrote such a story. I didn’t actually think of Lyovochka as old and ugly, though he was a little of both. I gave it to him without realizing it might cause pain. His response came, by post, a few days later:

  Naturally when I read your story, my dear one, I saw that I was Dublitsky. How could I think otherwise? I realized that I am what I am: Uncle Leo, an old, uncommonly plain – even ugly – character who should concern himself with God’s work and nothing more. I should do God’s work and do it well, and that should be enough for me. But I become miserable when I think of you, when I recall that I am Dublitsky. I am reminded of my age and the impossibility of happiness. For me, anyway. Yes, I am Dublitsky. But to marry simply because I need a wife is something beyond my ken. I can’t do it. I would ask of my future wife something terrible, impossible: I insist on being loved as I love. Forget about me. I shall not bother you anymore.

  I’d have stabbed myself in the breast a thousand times if that could have made a difference. I cursed myself for giving him my story. What had I been thinking? For days I was inconsolable.

  A week later, I sat at the piano, comforting myself with a light Italian score, a waltz called ‘Il Bacio,’ the kiss. There was a knock at the door. It was Lyovochka, his eyes sunken like potholes beneath his bushy brows. I may misremember this, but he smelled of lavender.

  He sat beside me at the piano and said, ‘I’ve been carrying a letter in my pocket for several days now. Will you read it, Sonya? It’s for you.’

  I quietly took the letter down the hall to my room, locking myself in to read it. My hands trembling, the characters difficult to see through my tears, I read: ‘Would you possibly consent to be my wife?’

  ‘Open this door!’ Lisa shrieked. She knew exactly what was going on. ‘Sonya! Open this door.’

  I peeked out.

  ‘What has he written to you? Tell me frankly.’

  ‘He has offered me his hand in marriage.’

  Her face tightened. She seemed fit to burst, like an overripe tomato. ‘Refuse him, Sonya! Say no!’ She began to pull at her own hair, ‘I will die if you don’t. It’s intolerable!’

  Such a scene! I adored every minute of it, of course, but I kept my composure. At least somebody in this house was worthy of the title Countess Tolstoy.

  Mama came scuffling down the hall when she heard the commontion. She dragged Lisa, kicking and squealing like a pig, back to her room. ‘What the count must think!’ Mama cried.

  ‘You must go into the parlor and deliver your response,’ she said to me flatly. All possible pleasure had drained from the scene she had so long anticipated.

  I found Lyovochka standing against the wall, his face white as a sail. He wrung his hands.

  ‘So?’ he asked. I heard a note of resignation in that question, and my heart went out to him. The poor, dear man!

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I will marry you, Leo Nikolayevich.’

  Soon an avalanche broke over our heads, what with servants rushing about, Lisa weeping beside me, Tanya shouting in her vulgar way, Mama offering drinks. Everyone was there but Papa, who pretended he was ill. In truth, he was upset that the count had revealed such bad manners. He should first have asked Papa. Indeed, he should have asked for Lisa’s hand. It took several days and much coaxing by Mama to bring him round, but he acquiesced. He always did.

  Life became miserable again too quickly. Lyovochka, in a fit of honesty, gave me his diaries. I was honored, at first, and thrilled. It seemed wonderfully romantic to read the most private thoughts of one’s future husband!

  One sentence hangs in my memory like a black crow: ‘I consider the company of women a necessary evil and avoid it when possible. Women are the source of all frivolity, all sensuality and indolence, all the vices to which men are prone.’ He went on to recount the whole disgusting story of endless nights on the town in Moscow, St Petersburg, even Tula and Sevastopol! Whores and peasant women of all stripes had shared his bed!

  I read on with disbelief, learning that he had lost his innocence as a boy of fourteen in Kazan, led to a brothel by his elder brother Sergey, who’d specialized in debauchery from the beginning. After he had performed the disgusting act, he stood by the harlot’s bedside, weeping. It was as if he foresaw all.

  And there was more. I heard for the first time about Axinya, the peasant woman who had served his vile needs for three years before our marriage. I could have borne this were it not for their son, Timothy, who haunts us still. The hideous, dim-witted Timothy, who snorts and guffaws, who prowls our house like a demon spirit from hell. Worse, he looks just like Lyovochka: the same height, the same slightly rounded shoulders, the unmistakable eyebrows and wispy spume of a beard! He has Lyovochka’s profile, too, with the fleshy nose and jutting chin. A loathsome parody of my husband, he lurches about Yasnaya Polyana, carrying wood, doing errands, creeping in the shadows.

  I have begged my husband to get rid of Timothy, to send him to Moscow, at least. We are never there anyway. But the Master wants his sins to cluster about him. He wants to suffer, to see that grotesque reflection of himself at every turn.

  I married Leo Tolstoy, the great author, on 23 September 1862, at eight o’clock, in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, right under the Kremlin’s long, imperial shadow.

  ‘How can I live without y
our company?’ my sister Tanya said, as I was leaving the church.

  ‘Try, my dear. Try.’

  I was pleased to slough off the old life. I was tired of being beholden to Papa, plagued by doubts about my future life. My life was settled, once and for all.

  Oh, was it settled.

  5

  Dr Makovitsky

  They laugh at me. They giggle and sneer behind my back. Even the servants have caught on to their little game. Just the other day I heard the maids saying, ‘The doctor is such a little runt – and a dunce.’ They get this kind of talk from Sofya Andreyevna, I suspect. She dislikes me. But what can one expect from a woman like her, who wastes her days snuffling around behind Leo Nikolayevich’s back like a dog, trying to unearth some new bone of discord. She suspects that Chertkov has convinced her husband to draft a new will that bequeaths his writing to the world after his death. He has always said he wants to do this, and it’s the obvious thing for him to do. But Sofya Andreyevna wants the royalties. How else could she support all the servants, the big house, the torrent of guests and outings and trips to Moscow, dresses from St Petersburg? Her avarice is as legendary as her inability to understand her husband’s principles. As Leo Nikolayevich often says to her, one should not expect to make a profit from books written for the sake of humanity. It offends him that anyone, let alone the poor, should have to pay to read what he has written.

  But I feel sorry for Sofya Andreyevna. It’s not that she is a bad woman. She simply does not understand what her husband has accomplished. Her soul is not copious enough to absorb his dreams for the improvement of humanity. On the other hand, they don’t require immense effort to comprehend. The poor shall inherit the earth. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. And so forth. Everything Leo Nikolayevich says has all been said before. In the realm of religion and ethics, one does not invent the truth; one discovers and proclaims it.