by Jay Parini
‘That’s like asking an ass not to brae,’ Papa said.
Chertkov assumed his usual arctic stare. He can hardly bear it when Papa teases him.
At last the weather grew heavy, with storm clouds swirling in the sky. It was raining hard, a diagonal June rain that turned the garden behind Meshcherskoye into black mud. That night, after dinner, a telegram arrived from Varvara. It startled the entire company: ‘Sofya Andreyevna’s nerves dreadful. Insomnia, weeping. Pulse is 100. Please telegraph.’
I felt sorry for Varvara. Mama was putting unnatural pressure on her, trying to pull her into the expanding web of madness that she spins for herself.
Two hours later, as we drank glasses of tea by a fire, a second telegram arrived, from Mama herself: ‘I beg of you, hurry back. Tomorrow.’
I took Papa off by himself into his room. ‘You must not give in to her,’ I told him.
‘She is unwell.’
‘She’s faking it. She always does this. It’s a trick to get you to go home before you’re ready.’
‘I’ve been here quite a long time.’
‘A few days! Anyway, Erdenko is coming tonight.’ Erdenko is the most celebrated violinist in Russia, and Papa cannot resist a good musical performance, even though he disapproves of taking too much pleasure in music.
He wrote a telegram: ‘More convenient return tomorrow. Unless indispensable.’
‘I’ll send it immediately,’ I said.
Everyone was pleased with Papa for not giving in. Alas, only a few hours later, a brief reply from Mama was delivered. ‘Indispensable,’ she wired.
‘You mustn’t cave in,’ I said to Papa. ‘There will be no end to her demands if she sees that she can force you to come and go at whim.’
Papa insisted that she is unwell, not physically but mentally. ‘She cannot help herself,’ he said. ‘It is my duty. I am glad of a chance to do my duty.’ More to himself than to me, he added, ‘God help me.’
I went to my room and, for the first time in some years, prayed. I prayed for Papa, whose burden grows heavier each day. I sensed that, soon, he would crack under the weight. A man of his age can carry only so much without breaking.
22
J. P.
SONYA: A SESTINA
On my knees, still praying, by the blackened pond.
I watch the moon’s bare sickle and the stars
that fleck and burn my skin, asking the God
of thunder to avenge me now, to cleanse or kill
the enemy without, within, to make love
blaze like this wild grassfire, searing wind.
I feel it rising in the wood, hot wind
across the world. It stipples the black pond
and wakens what I used to know of love,
that whirling zodiac of flinty stars
that filled my nights. It’s easier to kill
now, kill what hurts. To spit at God.
What have I come to, railing at my God?
Deliver me, O Lord. Let fiery wind
rise through my hair. Why should I kill
what I love best? I’ll float above the pond
tonight like moonglow, flaking stars.
I’ll fill the water, overwhelmed by love.
It’s what I live for: love, bright love
that starts, as always, in the eye of God,
then spills through dark, ignites the stars,
the fields and forests with its blazing wind
and marks the surface of my little pond,
a skin of fire. I’d never want to kill
what I love best. I may scream kill
and kill as Cain did in my heart. But love
prevents me, buoys me up. It’s like a pond
that holds and fills me with the light of God,
a love of man. I listen to the wind
that scatters, blows, and sparks a billion stars.
I’m on my knees still, scattered like the stars.
If I am nothing, what is there to kill?
I’m piecemeal, pierced, and parcel of the wind,
with nothing left to love or not to love.
I’m one bright atom in the mind of God,
almost extinguished here beside the pond.
I’m full of stars and, maybe, full of love.
I’ll kill whatever in me turns from God,
avoids hot wind, the heart’s black pond.
23
Sofya Andreyevna
My chest is so tight I can hardly breathe. At first, I wanted Lyovochka to go to Meshcherskoye. His pulse was sinking. He could remember almost nothing with clarity. I thought the trip to see his beloved would help. Alas, it did. He became well obscenely quickly. It was almost embarrassing to watch him charge to the station in Tula on horseback.
A long absence was not planned. I could have granted him a week or so. But the visit lengthened, and he never said a word about coming back. Didn’t he realize how sick I was, with sleeplessness and my rapid heartbeat, my headaches and dizziness?
The bare truth is that my husband, the greatest Russian author since Pushkin, has developed a ludicrous, senile crush on a plump, middle-aged flatterer. As a boy, even as a young man, he was drawn to men. He liked nothing better than his hunting trips. I have talked about this openly, but it makes him indignant. He does not see how foolish it is for a man to love another man. Not only is it foolish, it is sinful in the eyes of God.
Sasha says that I’m fantasizing, but I think Lyovochka would sleep with Chertkov if his conscience could bear it. But it can’t. It hovers over him like Father Time, flashing its sickle, making ridiculous demands. He is hounded by Furies, too – demons that pursue him into all corners of his life. It suits him to regard this mania as a visionary religion, but it’s nothing more than mental illness.
Religion should be a comfort, not a goad. When I go to the little church in the village, I expect God to calm my nerves. And He does. Otherwise I could not have remained married to Leo Tolstoy for nearly half a century. Nobody could withstand that pressure. It’s like living with a tornado.
Chertkov’s bitter stare and flabby jowls haunt me when I try to sleep. His smell, his voice, his pudgy fingers – everything about him taunts me, even when he is not here. He would be nothing without my Lyovochka; with him, Chertkov has risen in the world’s eyes to the rank of Leo Tolstoy’s closest friend, counselor, and publisher. He wears these facts on his shirtsleeves and lapels. ‘Look at me!’ screams from every pore. ‘I am the beloved of Leo Tolstoy! I am his conscience! His beacon!’
After Lyovochka’s death, which cannot be far away, Chertkov will discover who he is. Nobody.
I regard jealousy a defect of character. And I am jealous. I admit it and pray to God for forgiveness. But what does anyone, even God, expect of me? Chertkov has stolen the one thing that has sustained my life for forty-eight years! He has snatched Lyovochka from my arms. My dear, sweet Lyovochka….
Various ways of committing suicide have occurred to me, but I am not the type really. I do not want to die. But I do not want to live like this, either, with the knife of jealousy pushing its hot blade through my heart. This morning I wanted to go to Stolbovo and lie down on the tracks beneath the train on which it was convenient for Leo Nikolayevich to return from Meshcherskoye. What irony if the author of Anna Karenina should ride home over the pullulating body of his own dear wife! What a story that would make for the international press!
I have consulted Florinsky’s book on medicine to see what the effects of opium poisoning might be. I do not want a painful death, and death by train sounds dreadful. What if I didn’t die instantly? I once saw a dog run over by a heavy cart, its body crushed in the middle of the road. It writhed horribly, trying to drag itself to the edge of the road, bent like a horseshoe. A benevolent muzhik, fortunately, crushed its skull with a large stone, ending its misery. No, that is not for me.
Opium poisoning begins with a feeling of excitement, which soon turns to lethargy. It’s a little
like freezing to death in the snow. It doesn’t really hurt; you just go numb. Eventually, the sky and the earth meet, and your mind becomes your body, and your body turns to air. And there is no antidote.
I daresay if I don’t succeed in killing myself but do half a job of it, Chertkov will have me committed to an insane asylum. Perhaps then Leo Tolstoy, with his great admiration for the insane, will visit me. Then I shall garner his respect. Not now. I am too sane now. I tell the truth, and it hurts him.
Lyovochka arrived at ten on the twenty-fourth, much later than I wished. It was an act of defiance, of course. Like a little boy who cannot say directly what is angering him. Perhaps without his even knowing it himself, his delay said to me, ‘See, my dear. You are not so important as you think you are. I do not believe you are ill. But I shall go along with your petty game.’ Sometimes I feel hatred for him, a black bile that rises in my veins, dragged up through the roots of our ill relations. Sometimes I want to kill him.
I wanted to hate him then, but he seemed meek and nervous, frail as a bird, as he sat beside me on the bed, his hand pressed to my forehead.
‘Dear Sonya!’ he said. ‘I was so worried about you. Those telegrams had us all frantic.’
So. But I did not trust him. He has so often in the past affected great concern when what he usually wanted was sex. Now what he wants is to be let off the hook, to be forgiven for this emotional infidelity he commits repeatedly with Vladimir Grigorevich.
‘You want to kill me, don’t you?’ I asked. ‘You would prefer that I were dead.’
He shook his head. ‘Nonsense, Sonya. Where do you get such ideas? I don’t understand you anymore.’
‘It’s a question of logic, is it? You don’t see why B follows A? Is that your problem?’
‘You are trying to upset me.’
‘Do you still love me, Lyovochka?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he whispered. I waited for him to continue, to expand on this.
He lay down beside me on the bed, putting his broad forehead against my shoulder, and soon we both fell asleep and remained like that through the night. It was altogether strange and caused me to remember our first passionate years together, when it meant so terribly much to feel him beside me, to know that I mattered to him as I had mattered to my father. Once my father went to Paris to attend an international conference of doctors when I was thirteen. He stayed away for three months. And he never wrote me.
The next morning I spoke gently to Lyovochka about Chertkov.
‘It is quite insane, darling,’ I said, nestling beside him. ‘Everyone is making fun of you.’
‘Who?’
‘Andrey, Sukhotin, even the muzhiks. I heard them giggling in the horse barn one day, and I listened at the door. They were talking about you. Yes, about you!’
‘It matters very little what anyone says about me. Let them giggle if they find it amusing.’
‘I don’t find it amusing. I find it sick.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, sitting up in bed, kicking back the blankets.
‘I know what’s not normal. You’re obsessed with that man. You hang on his every word, as if God spoke through his mouth!’
‘He is a dear friend, and we have much in common.’ He was putting on his leather boots. ‘In any case, I do not find it a subject worth discussing. We have been over this ground before, Sonya. So many times….’
‘You and that man have nothing in common. He’s a sycophant and a pervert. He’s just using you, but you can’t seem to see it. It may not bother you, but I will not have such a person making a fool of my husband!’
He spat at the floor – I can’t remember when he last did that. ‘Let me alone,’ he said, ‘for God’s sake!’
I watched as he snapped the door shut behind him, leaving me alone. More alone than I have ever been. I wanted my bottle of opium.
I went downstairs, into the library. I don’t know exactly how long I waited there, on my knees like a scrubwoman, trying to work up the courage to swallow the fateful substance. I should have done it instantly.
It was Sasha who found me.
‘What idiotic thing is this, Mama?’ she said, as if it were nothing. Just Mama on her knees with a little opium in her hands.
‘One swallow, please! Just one!’ I said, waving the vial before my lips.
She tried to grab it from my hands, but I closed my fists about it. ‘It’s mine! It’s mine!’ I could hear myself saying, as if someone else were talking.
‘So drink it,’ she said. ‘Suit yourself.’
The ungrateful bitch.
‘You disgust me,’ I said.
I fell on the floor, hardly able to breathe. The vial spilled, and the smell of the opium surrounded me. Three servants lifted me into bed, one of them the ghostly Timothy, whose eyes quiver with the perpetual fury of a bastard. I was examined by Dushan Makovitsky, who kept muttering to himself as if I were not present. He is a nasty little cur.
My husband feigned concern, as he must. He is too cowardly to say outright that he finds me repulsive. But he does. The very sight of me sours his stomach.
‘Do you love me, Lyovochka?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘Nothing can stop that.’
‘Then fetch me your diary. I want to read what you’re writing about me. I must have the truth.’
‘What makes you think there is anything to read that concerns you?’
‘I want to read your diary,’ I repeated, coolly. He looked like the sky had fallen on his shoulders. ‘I have no secrets,’ he said. ‘My relations with you are public knowledge. I doubt if there is one muzhik in Russia who does not know everything about us.’
The diary was brought to me by a servant, Leo Tolstoy not being man enough to bring it himself. My fingers, twitching uncontrollably, turned the thick pages. It was almost too much to bear. Almost at once the telltale sentence snapped its beak like a prehistoric bird, ugly and devouring: ‘I must try to fight Sonya consciously, with kindness and love.’
I called for my husband, repeating the sentence in my head like a death knell: I must try to fight Sonya consciously, with kindness and love.
He stood in the doorway, meek, almost insubstantial.
I glared at him.
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Why do you want to fight me? What is it I’ve done to deserve such treatment?’
‘I see nothing in what I’ve written that should upset you.’
‘Let me see your other diaries. I want to read all your diaries from the last ten years.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’ He looked away from me as he spoke.
‘Where are they, Lyovochka? Where have you hidden them?’
‘I have not hidden them.’
‘Are they here?’
‘No.’
‘Does Chertkov have them?’
‘Please, Sonya. I … I –’
‘I knew it! He is greedily reading everything you have said about me. This is despicable. Have I not been an honest, loving wife for all these years? Answer me, Lyovochka!’
It began raining hard against the house, the wind blowing in through the curtains. The room grew hot and damp, and the day fell dark.
‘I don’t mind telling you the truth,’ he said, after a difficult pause. ‘Chertkov certainly has them. I gave them to him for safekeeping.’
‘This is the worst thing you have ever done to me,’ I said.
My stomach was sick now. I wanted to vomit. I threw off the covers and ran from the bedroom, down the slippery stairwell, out into the rain. For an hour I wandered in the orchard, blind with misery, but nobody came for me. They all hoped I would die. That was just what they wanted, but I was not about to grant them that satisfaction. I came home shivering, wet as moss, and crawled into bed like a child beaten once too many times.
Voices drifted into my room from down the hall. My husband was talking with Dushan Makovitsky. I could faintly make out his words. �
�The insane are always better at achieving their purposes than the sane,’ he was saying. ‘They have no morality to hold them back. They have no shame, no conscience.’
The very next day, Bulgakov told me the horrifying news that spelled – in essence – the end of my life. Chertkov had been granted permission to return to Telyatinki to visit his mother. He could stay as long as his mother remains in the province. Indeed, he was already there, plotting and scheming only a few versts from Yasnaya Polyana.
On the morning of the twenty-eighth, while everyone was asleep, Chertkov slipped through a deep mist that stood in the fields, the thick morning mist of midsummer that snags in the pine trees of Zasyeka, that blankets the isbas, a mist like sleep itself, a swirl on the cool Voronka. He came into our house like a thief and woke the kitchen servants, insisting that tea be brought to him in the parlor.
Lyovochka was wakened by Ilya, the servant boy, and he came bounding down the stairwell like a bridegroom on his wedding day. I know this even though I did not see it. Once you have seen the moon, you know what it looks like.
When I came into the parlor, Vladimir Grigorevich bowed with revolting politeness. He remains a dandy, in spite of the Tolstoyan overlays. His britches were made in England, and his red cashmere socks were distinctly un-Tolstoyan. He affected a blue linen blouse – the kind the muzhiks wear to church.
‘Good morning, Sofya Andreyevna. I am delighted to see you,’ he said.
He handed me a note:
I understand that you have in recent days been speaking of me as an enemy. I do hope this feeling can be attributed to some passing annoyance, caused by a misunderstanding that person-to-person communication will dispel like a bad dream. Since Leo Nikolayevich represents, for both of us, what we consider most valuable in life, a substantial, inevitable bond must already have formed between us.