Earth

by Rose Tremain

  But the distance to the waiting room wasn’t very great and soon enough Dr Makovitsky and Ivan Ozolin had lain the elderly writer down on a wooden bench near the wood-burning stove. Instructing the doctor to go back to the train for their bags, Tolstoy’s daughter did her best to make her father comfortable on the bench, tucking the blanket round him, taking the little pillow from his hands and placing it gently under his head, smoothing his springy white beard.

  Ivan hovered there a moment. His heart was beating wildly. He explained that he had an immediate duty to supervise the train’s onward departure towards Dankovo, but as soon as this was done, he would run to his cottage and prepare a bed for Count Tolstoy. ‘My wife will help me,’ he said. ‘It will be an honour.’

  The cottage had only four rooms: a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom and a small office where Ivan Ozolin kept his railway timetables and his stationmaster’s log. Outside the cottage was a vegetable garden and a privy.

  When Ivan Ozolin came rushing in to tell Anna Borisovna that Leo Tolstoy, gravely ill, had arrived to Astapovo and needed a bed in their house, she was boiling laundry on the kitchen range. She turned and stared at her husband. ‘Is this another of your jokes?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Ivan. ‘On the soul of my mother, this is not one of my jokes. We must give up our bed, Anna. To the poor and needy of this land, Tolstoy is a saint. In the name of all those who suffer today in Russia, we must make our own small sacrifice!’

  Anna Borisovna, though tempted to mock the sudden floweriness of Ivan’s language (brought on, no doubt, by the unexpected arrival of a famous writer), refrained from doing so, and together she and Ivan went to their room and began dismantling their iron bed. The bed was heavy and old and the bolts rusty, and this work took them the best part of half an hour.

  They carried the bed into their sitting room and reassembled it, dragged their mattress on to it and then laid on clean sheets and pillow cases and woollen blankets from their blanket chest. While Ivan banked up the stove, Anna set a night table by the bed and a chamber pot underneath it. She put a jug of water and a bowl and some linen towels on the night table. She said to Ivan: ‘I wish I had some violets to put in a little vase for him.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Ivan Ozolin. ‘Now you must come with me and we’ll carry him across the tracks. Only twenty-nine minutes before the Dankovo train.’

  When they got back to the waiting room, Tolstoy was sleeping. His daughter, too, had gone to sleep kneeling on the hard floor, with her head lying on the bench, near her father’s muddy boots. Dushan Makovitsky kept a lonely vigil at their side and seemed very relieved to see Ivan return with Anna Borisovna.

  ‘Good people,’ he said in a whisper. ‘You can’t know how grateful I am. You must understand that this is a terrible business. Terrible beyond imagining. Count Tolstoy left his home in secret two nights ago. He left because his wife had made his life unbearable. He left to try to find peace, far away from the Countess. But he lives in mortal fear of being followed, of his whereabouts being discovered by her. So secrecy is vital. You understand? Nobody but you must know that he’s here.’

  Ivan and Anna nodded. Ivan murmured that of course they understood, and would respect the need for concealment. But he nevertheless felt himself go cold with sudden terror. He looked down at the old man. Surely he – who must by now be in his eighties – would have preferred to live out his last years peacefully on his estates, and yet he’d run away in the middle of an October night! What marital persecutions had pushed him to make this extraordinary decision? If this was what marriage had done to someone as wise as Leo Tolstoy – to the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina – what might it eventually do to him, the humble stationmaster of Astapovo?

  He glanced up at the waiting room clock. Seventeen minutes remained before the arrival of the Dankovo train.

  ‘We should hurry,’ he said. ‘Everything is prepared.’

  Now, as darkness came down, the great writer Leo Tolstoy was undressed tenderly by his daughter, who put a clean nightshirt on him and combed his hair and beard and helped him to lie down in the iron bed. He was very tired and weak, but he knew that he was in a strange place and Ivan and Anna, working next door in their small kitchen, heard him say to his daughter: ‘Sasha, I know I’m ill. I suppose I could be dying. So I want you to send a telegram to Vladimir Chertkov and ask him to come here. Send it tonight.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Papa. But if Mama finds out that you sent for Chertkov and not for her—‘

  ‘I can’t help it. To see her face would kill me! I can’t set eyes on her ever again. I can’t. But I must see Chertkov. There’s all the wretched business of my will and my copyrights to settle …’

  ‘All of that was sorted out, Father. Vladimir and I know your wishes; that all the copyrights are willed to me and I authorise that your works are to be made available to the Russian people, free of any charge …’

  ‘Yes. But Vladimir is to be the executor. Only him. Not you, not Tanya, not any of my good-for-nothing sons. Vladimir Chertkov alone will decide what’s to be published and by whom and when … both the fiction and all the other work … and the diaries your mother tried to steal …’

  ‘He knows. You’ve been through it a hundred times.’

  ‘No, we haven’t been through it a hundred times. And I want him here, Sasha! Don’t argue with me! Arguments give me a pain in my heart. Where’s Dushan?’

  ‘Dushan’s sleeping, Papa. In the waiting room. He hasn’t slept for thirty hours …’

  Then, as Ivan and Anna tugged out their few pieces of good china and Anna began to wash these, they heard the sound of wailing and it reminded them both of the noise that a wolf can make when it finds its leg caught in a trap. Ivan stared helplessly at his wife. He wished he could summon up some terrible joke to crack, as a weapon against the wolf-howls coming from next door, but he just couldn’t think of one.

  ‘Try to stop crying, Papa,’ they heard Sasha say. ‘It really does no good. I’m going to send the telegram to Vladimir now. Then I’ll be back and we’ll see whether you can eat something.’

  The front door of their cottage opened and closed. The Ozolins knew they were alone in their house with Leo Tolstoy. They thought of the long night ahead, with no bed to sleep on. But it was almost time for the 5.18 train from Tula, so Ivan Ozolin tugged on his overcoat and gloves and took down his red and green flags and went out by the back door. Anna Borisovna dried the china slowly. After a few minutes, she heard the weeping diminish, breath by breath, as though the weeper had just become exhausted with it.

  The following morning, under a blank grey sky, Vladimir Chertkov arrived on the 9.12 train from Moscow. He was a good-looking man in his fifties with a well-trimmed brown beard. When Sasha greeted Chertkov on the Dankovo platform, Ivan Ozolin heard him say: ‘Where in heaven’s name have I come to? There’s nothing here.’

  They had to wait for the Dankovo-bound train to leave before they could cross the tracks to the cottage. Ivan Ozolin had hoped to accompany them. He felt that, at last, his own life was bound up with something important and he didn’t want to miss a moment of it. But when the steam from the departed train cleared, he saw that Sasha and Chertkov were already walking away from him over the rails, so he stood there and let them go, while he slowly folded up his green flag.

  Then he caught sight of Dmitri Panin running in an agitated way along the Smolensk platform, waving a telegram in his hand. As Chertkov and Sasha passed him, Dmitri stopped and hesitated, but then hurried on to the end of the platform and began beckoning frantically to Ivan Ozolin. In the sunless morning, Dmitri’s face appeared as red as a beet.

  ‘Look at this!’ he gasped, when Ivan reached him. ‘It’s from Countess Tolstoy – to her husband! What in the world is going on?’

  Ivan seized the telegram and read: We know where you are. Arriving with Andrei, Ilya, Tanya and Mikhail tonight. Special Pullman train from Tula. Signed: Your loyal wife, Countess Sonya A
ndreyevna Tolstoya.

  ‘Ivan,’ said Dmitri. ‘Tell me what the hell is happening …’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Ivan. ‘It’s too late for secrecy now, if she knows where he is.’

  ‘But how did she find out? You didn’t send a message, did you?’

  ‘Me? Message to who?’

  ‘Somebody must have sent a message. How could it have got out except via your telegraph office?’

  Dmitri wiped a hand across his sweating brow. ‘Ivan,’ he said, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about!’

  ‘Oh, the poor man …’ murmured Ivan. ‘He said he’ll die, if he catches sight of her!’

  ‘What? Who will die?’

  ‘Count Tolstoy. He’s here, Dmitri.’

  ‘Here? What d’you mean? Here, where?’

  ‘In my bed. No, keep your hair on, it isn’t one of my jests. I swear. Leo Tolstoy is here, in the bed of the stationmaster of Astapovo! Now, give me back the telegram. I’d better give someone this news.’

  When Ivan Ozolin went into the dark living room of the cottage, he saw by the soft candlelight a scene which reminded him of a religious picture. Leo Tolstoy was lying, propped up on the white pillows, with his white hair and beard fanning out from his face like a frosty halo. Leaning towards him, one on either side of him, were his daughter Sasha and his friend and faithful secretary, Vladimir Chertkov. Their heads rested tenderly against Tolstoy’s shoulders. They stroked his hands, clasping the embroidered cushion, with theirs. Sasha’s dark hair was loose and spread over her blue blouse. The Madonna, thought Ivan. The Madonna (just a little plump) with St John, at the foot of the Cross …

  Though he hesitated to interrupt this beautiful scene of adoration – particularly with news he imagined would be so unwelcome – he knew that he had to warn someone about the arrival of the Countess. Luckily, when Tolstoy saw him come in, he said: ‘Oh my friends, here is the good man, Ivan Andreyevich Ozolin, who has been so very kind to us. Come here, stationmaster, and let me introduce you to my most beloved friend, Vladimir Chertkov.’

  Chertkov stood up and Ivan Ozolin shook his hand. ‘Thank you for all you’ve done,’ Chertkov said. ‘We fervently hope the Count will soon be well enough to travel onwards, but in the meantime …’

  ‘Sir,’ said Ivan. ‘Anything we’ve been able to do for Count Tolstoy … it’s done from deep in our hearts. But I wonder whether I might have a word with you in private?’

  Chertkov followed Ivan out into the cold, closing the door behind them, and they walked a little way from the window of the living room and stood by the fence that bordered the vegetable garden. Looking distractedly down at the carrots, onions and leeks in their little rows, Ivan passed the telegram to Chertkov and heard his gasp of horror as he took in the news of the Countess’s arrival.

  ‘Disaster!’ said Chertkov. ‘God in heaven, how could she have known?’

  Ivan shook his head. ‘I asked my telegraph man, Dmitri Panin, if anything had gone from here and he swore …’

  ‘No, no. I’m not suggesting you were in any way … Oh, but you can’t know, stationmaster, what a fiend that woman is! Mad with jealousy. Prying among the Count’s papers and diaries day and night. Threatening suicide. Never giving him any peace … And now … This is going to kill him!’

  At this moment Dr. Dushan Makovitsky came over the tracks, from where he’d been taking breakfast in the small buffet which served dry little meals to the few travellers who boarded or left trains at Astapovo. When news of the arrival of the Countess was conveyed to Makovitsky, he remained calm. ‘The solution is simple,’ he said. ‘We’ll say nothing to Leo Nikolayevich. We’ll just close the doors to the cottage – front and back – we’ll close them and lock them and neither Countess Tolstoy nor any of her other children will be allowed in.’

  ‘So we’re going to be locked in?’ said Anna Borisovna to Ivan that afternoon, as she toiled over her bread-baking. ‘This is getting stupid. We’ve given up our bed. Now we’re going to be prisoners, are we?’

  Ivan looked at his wife. He noticed, as if for the first time, how grey and straggly her hair appeared. He wondered how it would look – and how he would cope with the way it looked – when she was old.

  ‘Well, or you could get on a train and leave, Anna Borisovna,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Countess Tolstoy would let you take her private Pullman back to Tula?’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ said Anna Borisovna. ‘Nothing you say is funny any more.’

  Ivan Ozolin smiled. ‘Jokes need the right audiences,’ he said. ‘A joke is a contract with another human being.’

  As Anna turned away from him, they both heard a new sound coming from next door, the sound of hiccups. They heard Tolstoy cry out for Chertkov and then for Dushan Makovitsky. They waited. The hiccups continued, very loud. Tolstoy now called out for Sasha, but no consoling voice was heard.

  ‘They must be asleep,’ said Ivan. ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘Well, and that’s another thing,’ hissed Anna. ‘Just where in the world are all these new arrivals going to be housed? Are you expecting them to sleep under the telegraph counter with Dmitri?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ivan. ‘I was thinking that would be convenient. That way they’re on hand to send telegrams to the press bureaus of the world.’

  Anna Borisovna seized a dishcloth covering a bowl of yeast and snapped it angrily in her husband’s face, stinging his cheek. He put his hand to his face. He wanted to retaliate by pulling her dishevelled hair, pulling it until it hurt, but he stopped himself.

  He didn’t want to become the kind of pig who beat his wife. He didn’t want to become a pig at all. He was enjoying his role as the ‘saviour’ of Leo Tolstoy’s life and he didn’t want that disturbed.

  He was on the platform, with Sasha and Dr Makovitsky, when the gleaming Pullman arrived. Once Countess Tolstoy and her four eldest children had descended and had been led into the ladies’ waiting room by Sasha, Ivan Ozolin, as instructed by Chertkov, told the driver of the Pullman to shunt the two carriages into the siding running parallel with the Dankovo track and leave them there.

  He then went into the waiting room. He found the Countess weeping in Sasha’s arms and the other grownup children standing around with faces set in expressions of grumpy disdain. When the Countess raised her head to acknowledge his presence, he saw a fleshy face, every part of which appeared swollen, whether by grief or malady or gourmandise he was unable to say.

  ‘So it’s you!’ she said, flinging out an accusing gloved finger. ‘It’s you who are hiding him!’

  ‘Hush, Mama,’ said Sasha.

  ‘You should know’, said the Countess to Ivan, ‘that, wherever my husband goes, I go too. If he’s in your bed, then that is where I am going to sleep!’

  She broke again into a storm of weeping, which only calmed a little when Anna Borisovna came into the waiting room with a tray of hot tea and some slices of cinnamon cake, which everybody fell upon. It was now near to midnight. Dr Makovitsky drew Ivan aside.

  ‘Are the Pullman cars staying here?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ivan was able to say. ‘But I think the train company is going to levy a charge.’

  ‘Friend,’ said Makovitsky, ‘in any crisis, there are always roubles to pay.’

  All night, Leo Tolstoy coughed and hiccuped. At around three o’clock, Sasha woke Anna and Ivan and asked if some infusion could be made to relieve these sufferings.

  They staggered, exhausted, to the kitchen and put water on to boil and took down jars of dried sage and comfrey and cloves. ‘How much longer is this going to go on?’ asked Anna.

  Ivan carried the infusion into the living room, which was very dark, the candles having burnt low. He laid the jug down on the cluttered night table. Vladimir Chertkov, in his nightshirt, was lying across the end of Tolstoy’s bed. Dr Makovitsky was taking the old man’s pulse. The great writer was curled up in the bed, seeming small like a child. Ivan glimpsed blood on his pillow.
>
  ‘Escape …’ he was heard to murmur once again. ‘I must escape …’

  Ivan Ozolin rose early to see in the 7.12 from Moscow via Tula to Dankovo.

  In the normal way, perhaps two or three passengers got off, or the train crew changed here. But this morning, every single door all the way down the train opened and fifty or sixty people disembarked.

  Ivan Ozolin stared at this crowd. Perhaps he’d known they’d come eventually, that the life of Leo Tolstoy was as precious to the people of his country as the earth itself and that, if he was going to die, they would want some part in his dying. He could see straight away that many of the arrivals were newsmen with cameras, and as they milled around on the platform – looking in vain for some grand Station Hotel or the presence of a commodious telegraph office – he felt himself surrender to them, to the grand circus that was accumulating at Astapovo. He wanted to embrace them, to say, ‘You were right to come! Life is uneventful, my friends! Don’t I know it! But here’s an event: the dying Tolstoy trying to keep his wife at bay! So come and get your bit of it and remember forever whatever you think it teaches you.’

  Now, the two waiting rooms, the station buffet, the two Pullman cars and the freezing anteroom that adjoined Dmitri Panin’s telegraph office were crammed with reporters, all trying to buy food, send messages, write copy and above all to catch a glimpse of the writer, as he lay gasping and hiccuping in Ivan Ozolin’s iron bed. Dmitri, made faint by cigarette smoke, noise and rudeness, struggled on at his post. To the front of his guichet Ivan Ozolin stuck a notice that read: Your Telegraph Operator has not read the works of L.N. Tolstoy, so please do not waste time by asking him any questions about them.

  More journalists arrived by every train. And then from across the surrounding countryside, as the news spread, peasant farmers, blacksmiths, carpenters, laundresses, wheelwrights, slaughterers, seamstresses, milkmaids and bricklayers began to converge on Astapovo. These last slept out in the open, or in hay barns, made fires in the fields, seeming not to mind cold or hunger. A cohort of sausage-makers did a brisk trade. Potatoes were dug up by hand and roasted in the fires. Snatches of the patriotic song ‘Eternal Memory’ floated out across the dark earth. Normal existence was put to one side. Astapovo was where life had paused.