The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  It is so hard for him, the dear, wise man…Yesterday he said to Seryozha: “I thought it was easy to die, but it isn’t, it’s terribly hard.”

  He has just called Tanya in to see him. He was so happy when she arrived. He was also pleased to get a telegram from Grand Duke Nikolai, saying he had personally handed his letter to the Tsar.

  Doctor Volkov is on duty one night, Altschuler the next, and Elpatevsky the third; Shchurovsky is here all day.

  29th January. 9 o’clock in the morning. They insisted I go upstairs and get some sleep, but having spent the past hour sobbing I now feel like writing again. My Lyovochka (although he isn’t mine now but God’s) had a terrible night. The moment he dropped off he started choking and shrieking and couldn’t sleep. First he asked Seryozha and me to sit him up in bed, then he drank some milk, followed by half a glass of champagne and some water. He never complained but he was tossing about and suffering terribly.

  I have a spasm in my chest every time he groans. How can I not suffer too, when my other half is suffering?

  Every loved person’s passage to eternity enlightens the soul of those who tenderly bid him farewell. Oh Lord, help my soul remain to the end of my life in this lofty enlightened state that I experience increasingly these days! He has just gone to sleep and Liza Obolenskaya and Masha have taken my place. I sat with him until 4 in the morning.

  30th January. Yesterday morning he was feeling so well that shortly before 1 he sent for his daughter Masha and dictated into his notebook roughly the following words: “The wisdom of old age is like carat diamonds: the older it is the more valuable it is, and must be given away to others.” Then he asked for his article on freedom of conscience, and began to dictate various corrections to it.*

  His temperature was normal all day and he was in good spirits, and we all cheered up. This evening I took up my nightly vigil by his bed; I sat with him until four in the morning, listening to his breathing, and all was well.

  Lyova arrived yesterday evening. I always love to see him.

  Misha too came this evening, bubbling with life as usual.

  At about three he began choking and tossing, then he went to sleep.

  It is now eight in the evening and he is sleeping peacefully.

  He generally calls for Andryusha when it is time for him to change position, and he eats most happily from Masha’s hand. My suffering for him is involuntarily communicated to him, he often strokes my hand and tries to spare my strength, and will accept only the lightest personal attentions from me now.

  31st January. He had a bad night. He tossed and gasped until 4 a.m., called twice for Seryozha and asked him to sit him up in bed.

  Yesterday he said to Tanya: “What was it they said about Count Olsufiev? That he had an easy death?* Well it’s not at all easy, it’s hard, very hard, to cast off this familiar skin,” he said, pointing to his emaciated body.

  He was better today and called for Dunaev and Misha; every new arrival delights him. Ilya’s wife Sonya also arrived today. It’s noisy and crowded here, but the death of my beloved husband pursues its natural course.

  He has been dictating notes for his notebook again, as well as for some articles he has already started. He looks so peaceful and serious in bed. He dictated a long telegram to his brother Sergei.

  1st February. He has had a terrible night. He was awake until seven in the morning, he had a stomach ache and was gasping for breath. I massaged his stomach several times, but it didn’t help. Once he fell asleep for ten minutes while I was massaging, and I stopped rubbing and froze, kneeling on the floor, with my hand on his left side. I thought he would take a nap, but he soon woke up and started groaning again. At five in the morning I went out and Liza and Seryozha took my place. At seven o’clock we woke Doctor Shchurovsky, who gave him a morphine injection. Doctor Elpatevsky also kept watch over him, but by then he was so exhausted he went to sleep. He had a fairly peaceful day, and Shchurovsky put another plaster on his left side.

  He dictated some notes to Masha for his notebook.

  2nd February. Ilya’s wife Sonya came yesterday evening, as well as old Uncle Kostya and Varya Nagornova. Lev Nikolaevich is delighted to have visitors.

  At three in the morning he had a small morphine injection (a sixth of a grain), and ten minutes later fell asleep and slept till morning. Today for the first time his temperature was 35.9 instead of 36.9. He tucked into an egg and some tapioca with milk, and is looking forward to a meringue for dinner—the doctor has allowed this.

  He dictated to Masha some corrections to his article ‘On Freedom of Conscience’.

  Yesterday all the children and I had our photograph taken—in memory of a sad but important time.

  3rd February. The Russian Gazette has at last published news today of Lev Nikolaevich’s illness.

  Yesterday morning Lyova left for St Petersburg.

  He has taken a little soup, an egg and a meringue. He asked Sonya, “Where did you bury your mother last year?” “We took her body to Paniki, at my brother’s request.” “How senseless,” he said. “What’s the point of moving a dead body?”

  5th February. The situation is unchanged. A night under morphine—they gave him an injection of 1/8 of a grain. He drinks champagne and milk with Ems water, and eats puréed oat soup, eggs and gruel. We applied a compress today. I am sitting here exhausted and numb; it has all been too much for my heart, and now I have slumped, waiting.

  6th February. A sleepless night, two injections of morphine, nothing helped. At 5 a.m. I went to bed exhausted. A morning of anxieties.

  Elpatevsky and Altschuler came. They say this is the crisis. The pneumonia has suddenly started to clear from both lungs. But what will happen when his temperature falls? We are living in terror. “Everything is in the balance,” he said today to his niece Varenka. He is taking his own pulse and temperature, and is very frightened; we are forced to deceive him and reduce the degrees.

  The cold and wind make things worse.

  7th February. The situation is almost hopeless. Until 5 o’clock I was doing all I could to relieve his suffering. The only time my darling Lyovochka dropped off was when I lightly massaged his stomach and liver. He thanked me and said: “Darling, you must be exhausted.”

  Olga’s pains began this morning, and at seven she gave birth to a dead baby boy.

  Today Lev Nikolaevich said: “There, you’ve arranged everything perfectly, give me a camphor injection and I’ll die.”

  He also said: “Don’t try to predict what will happen. I can’t foresee anything.”

  He asked for the medical notes on the progression of his illness—his temperature chart, medicines, diet and so on—and read it closely. Then he asked Masha what she had felt during the crisis in her typhus attack. Poor, poor man, he so wants to go on living, yet his life is slipping away…

  There is thick snow on the ground and a strong wind. Oh this hateful Crimea!

  Tonight there were eight degrees of frost.

  8th February. He spent a slightly more comfortable night.

  He called Masha today and dictated a page of ideas to her—against war—“fratricide”, as he calls it.*

  I sat with him until five in the morning; I turned him over with the help of Boulanger, changed his soaking underwear and gave him his medicine (digitalis), and some champagne and milk.

  When I examine my soul I realize that my entire being aspires only to nurse this beloved man back to life. But when I’m sitting with my eyes closed, all sorts of dreams suddenly creep up on me, and plans for the most diverse, varied and improbable life…Then I come back to reality and my heart aches again for the death of this man who has become so much part of me I couldn’t imagine myself without him.

  A strange double life. The cause, I tell myself, is my own indestructible health, my enormous energy, that demands an outlet and finds nourishment only in those difficult moments when it is really necessary to do something.

  9th February. The other day he said: “It k
eeps hurting. The machine has broken down. Pull the nose and the tail gets stuck, pull the tail and the nose gets stuck.”

  Yesterday was a fine day, and he was better. It is snowing again today, and it’s dark, overcast and freezing.

  10th February. Another fine day—it was 3 degrees. Our dear invalid had a good night and was in less pain during the day, although he is still dreadfully weak and had a temperature of 36.3. He hasn’t said a word all day, nothing interests him, he just lies there quietly. He had three small glasses of coffee, asked for some champagne and was given two camphor injections. He is peaceful and I feel fairly calm.

  12th February. He has been very weak and drowsy, and hardly speaks at all. Yesterday he asked Doctor Volkov how the common people cured old men like him—did they give them camphor injections? Who lifted them up in bed? What did they give them to eat? Volkov answered all his questions, saying they treated them just the same, and it was generally the family or the neighbours who attended to them, lifted them up and helped them.

  14th February. An anxious night. It’s a long time since I felt so weak and exhausted.

  I read my unfinished children’s story ‘Skeletons’* to the children, Varya Nagornova and some young ladies, and they seemed to like it.

  As for Lyovochka, I simply don’t know what to think: I don’t know whether this weakness is temporary or terminal. I keep hoping, but today matters have again taken a gloomy turn.

  How I should love to look after him patiently and gently to the end, and forget all the old heartaches he has caused me. But instead I cried bitterly today at the way he persistently scorns my love and concern for him. He asked for some sieved porridge, so I ran off to the kitchen and ordered it, then came back and sat beside him. He dozed off, the porridge came and when he woke I quietly put it on a plate and offered it to him. He then grew furious and said he would ask for it himself, and that throughout his illness he had always taken his food, medicines and drinks from other people, not me. (Although when someone has to lift him up, go without sleep, attend to him in the most intimate ways and apply his compresses, it is of course me whom he forces mercilessly to help him.) With the porridge, however, I decided to employ a little cunning, so I called Liza and sat down in the next room, and the moment I left he asked for the porridge, and I began weeping.

  This little episode summarizes my whole difficult life with him. This difficulty consists of one long struggle with his contrary spirit. My most reasonable and gentle advice to him has always met with protest.

  15th February. I received a letter from the St Petersburg Metropolitan Antony exhorting me to persuade him to return to the faith and make his peace with the Church, and help him die like a Christian. I told Lyovochka about this letter, and he told me I should write to Antony that his business was now with God, and to tell him his last prayer had been: “I left Thee. Now I am coming to Thee. Thy will be done.” And when I said if God sent death, then one should reconcile oneself in death to everything on earth, including the Church, he said: “There can be no question of reconciliation. I am dying without anger or enmity in my heart. What is the Church?”

  The pains in his side are worse, his lungs are still inflamed, and tomorrow they will apply a plaster.

  It’s foggy and cool. There is a steamer in the sea beyond Gaspra, and its sirens are hooting mournfully. The ships are all at anchor at the moment; I suppose they are afraid to move in the fog.

  16th February. Lev Nikolaevich is a little better today: he is not in pain and is lying quietly; he slept much better too.

  It’s extraordinary how selfless these doctors are: neither Shchurovsky nor Altschuler nor the zemstvo doctor Volkov, the poorest but kindest of them all, will accept any money; they are so generous with their time, and never begrudge the labour, the financial loss or the sleepless nights. They put a plaster on his right side today.

  My head was aching this evening and it felt as if it would burst, so I lay down on the divan in Lev Nikolaevich’s room. He called out to me. I got up and went to him. “Why are you lying down?” he said. “I can’t call you if you do that.”

  “My head is aching,” I said. “What do you mean, you can’t call me? You call me at night.” And I sat down on a chair. He then called to me again: “Go into the other room and lie down. Why are you sitting up?” “But I can’t leave—there’s no one here,” I said. I was terribly agitated and almost hysterical with tiredness. Masha came and I left, but then urgent tasks awaited me on all sides—business documents from the accountant in Moscow, summonses and translations, and everything had to be entered in the book, signed and sent off. Then the washerwoman and the cook had to be paid, the notes had to be sent to Yalta…

  19th February. I haven’t written my diary for several days: the nursing is very hard work and leaves me little time—barely enough for housework and essential letters and business.

  My poor Lyovochka is still very weak. He has been thirsty, and today drank four half-bottles of kefir. The doctors say the pneumonia is making slow progress in clearing from the right lung.

  20th February. He was better yesterday; his temperature was only 37.1 and he was much more cheerful. “I see I shall now have to live again,” he said to Doctor Volkov.

  “Are you bored then?” I asked him, and he said with sudden animation: “Bored? How could I be? On the contrary, everything is splendid.” This evening, concerned that I might be tired, he squeezed my hand, looked at me tenderly and said: “Thank you, darling, that’s wonderful.”

  22nd February. He is much better; his temperature was 36.1 this morning and 36.6 this evening. They are still giving him camphor injections, and arsenic every other morning.

  I received a letter from the orphanage suggesting I resign as patron, as I am away and cannot be useful to them. We shall see who they choose in my place and how they run their affairs.

  23rd February. Another bad night. Towards evening his temperature rose to 37.4 and his pulse was 107, although it soon dropped to 88, then 89.

  At night he called out to me: “Sonya?” I went in to him. “I was just dreaming that you and I were driving to Nikolskoe in a sledge together.”

  This morning he told me how well I had looked after him in the night.

  25th February. The first day of Lent. I yearn for the mood of peace, prayer and self-denial, the anticipation of spring and all the childhood memories that assail me in Moscow and Yasnaya with the approach of Lent.

  But everything is so alien here.

  Lev Nikolaevich is more cheerful, and for the first time last night he slept from 12 to 3 without waking. At 5 a.m. I went off to take a nap and he stayed awake. This morning he read the papers and took an interest in his letters. Two exhort him to return to the Church and receive the Eucharist, two beg him to send some of his works as a gift, and two foreigners express feelings of rapture and reverence. I too received a letter, from Princess Maria Dondukova-Korsakova, saying I should draw him back to the Church and give him the Eucharist.

  These spiritual sovereigns expel L.N. from the Church—then call on me to draw him back to it! How absurd!

  27th February. Seryozha looked after his father all night with extraordinary gentleness. “How astonishing,” Lev Nikolaevich said to me. “I never expected Seryozha to be so sensitive,” and his voice was trembling with tears.

  Today he said: “I have now decided to expect nothing more; I kept expecting to recover, but now what will be will be, it’s no use trying to anticipate the future.” He himself reminds me to give him his digitalis, or asks for the thermometer to take his temperature. He is drinking champagne again and lets them give him his camphor injections.

  28th February. Today he said to Tanya: “A long illness is a good thing, it gives one time to prepare for death.”

  And he also said to her today: “I am ready for anything; I am ready to live and ready to die.”

  This evening he stroked my hands and thanked me. But when I changed his bedclothes he suddenly lost his temper becau
se he felt cold. Then of course he felt sorry for me.

  A terrible blizzard, with one degree of frost. The wind is howling and rattling the window frames.

  I spilt some ink and got it all over everything.

  5th March. He is better; his temperature was 35.7 this morning and 36.7 this evening. The doctors say there is still some wheezing, but apart from that everything is normal. He has such a huge appetite he cannot wait for his dinner and lunch, and has drunk three bottles of kefir in the past twenty-four hours. Today he asked for his bed to be moved to the window so he can look out at the sea. He is still very weak and thin, he sleeps badly at night and is very demanding. He once called out five times in one hour—first he wanted his pillow adjusted, then he needed his leg covered up, then the clock was in the wrong place, then he wanted some kefir, then he wanted his back sponged, then I had to sit with him and hold his hands…And the moment one lies down he calls again.

  We have had a fine day and the nights are moonlit, but I feel dead, dead as the rocky landscape and the dull sea. The birds sing outside, and for some reason neither the moon nor the birds, nor the fly buzzing at the window seem to belong to the Crimea, but keep reminding me of springtime in Yasnaya Polyana or Moscow. So the fly takes me back to a hot summer at harvest time, and the moon evokes memories of our garden in Khamovniki Street, and returning home from concerts…

  6th March. Last night was frightful. Agony in his body, his legs, his soul—it was too much for him. “I can’t imagine why I recovered, I wish I had died,” he said.

  8th March. I had a nasty scene with Seryozha. He shouted at a servant about Lev Nikolaevich’s new armchair: he said we should wire Odessa about it, but had absolutely no idea where or whom. I said we should first decide what kind of chair was needed. This made him lose his temper and he began shouting.