The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year

by Jay Parini

  ‘Can you possibly leave me in peace?’ he asked.

  I implored him to think about his family, to reconsider whatever he had done to adjust his will, to listen to reason. But he sat impassively in his chair, casting a pall across the room like a bare electric light.

  ‘Are you finished, Sofya Andreyevna?’

  ‘I am,’ I said. I could see that, in all ways, I was. Whatever love may have lived between us was dead.

  We spoke not a word to each other that day. The following morning he left home before breakfast, on horseback. This was most unlike him. I realized he must be heading to Telyatinki, so I set off, on foot, for Chertkov’s house.

  At the entrance to the estate, I hid myself in a low ditch. I lay there all day with binoculars trained on the house. I did not see Lyovochka’s horse anywhere, or catch a glimpse of him. Twice I saw Chertkov come and go, which made me wonder if, indeed, Lyovochka had gone to Telyatinki. Perhaps I had been mistaken?

  When darkness began to fall, I set off, weary of heart, back to Yasnaya Polyana. By the time I got there, my temples throbbed. My feet burned. I felt dizzy and nauseated.

  I sat on a wooden bench, beneath a tall pine, for an hour or two. Stars speckled the sky above me, and I felt I was looking into infinity. I said, in my heart, I am all yours, God. Take me. Take me. I wanted God or oblivion. I wanted to count myself among the thousand stars.

  I might easily have sat there forever had not Ivan, the coach driver, seen me.

  ‘Countess? Is that you?’

  ‘Ivan,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I am quite unwell, Ivan. Help me.’

  He took my hand and led me home, like an old mule back to the barn.

  Lyovochka was still awake, sitting on his bed, reading by candlelight. I don’t know why I did this, but I told him exactly what I had done that day, how I had waited in the ditch, frantic, till nightfall. How I had asked, prayed, even begged, for death.

  He listened carefully, then said, ‘Sonya, I am extremely tired of your whims. What I want now is freedom. I am eighty-two years old, and I refuse to let you treat me like a child. I will not be tied to my wife’s apron strings!’

  ‘What does this mean?’

  ‘It means that, from now on, I shall feel perfectly free to write to Chertkov, even to meet with him when I feel it is necessary. I cannot play this game any longer.’

  ‘You can’t do this to me,’ I said.

  ‘Wait and see,’ he said.

  The next day, Lyovochka seemed determined to prove his independence. He sat in the garden drinking tea with Novikov, a muzhik he admires for reasons I cannot fathom. Right in front of me, Novikov said, ‘You ought to see how we treat our women in the village! When they get out of line – swat!’ He slapped his thigh with a flat palm. ‘A woman has to be ruled with a stick! It’s the only way to keep them quiet.’

  Lyovochka, apostle of nonviolence, began to laugh uncontrollably. ‘We have a good deal to learn from the muzhiks,’ he said. ‘This is quite wonderful. Lovely!’

  I left them to their ridiculous conversation.

  That afternoon, Lyovochka decided to prove his manliness by resuming gymnastics. As a young man, he would hang upside down from a bar in his study, terrifying the servants. ‘It brings blood to the brain,’ he used to say. Now he attempted to hang upside down from a wardrobe, which has some iron hooks that fit his bootheels. But his weight, of course, brought the whole thing down on top of him.

  ‘You’re like a child,’ I told him. ‘You can’t be trusted.’

  Furious more with himself than with me, he locked his study door until dinner. At seven, he came down and ate in silence.

  It is almost November, and I am sad. The weather grows worse every day: windy and cold, with rain like pellets, sometimes a dust of snow. I walk in the woods each morning with my dogs, Marquis and Belka. We follow the same ruts in Zasyeka Wood that Lyovochka uses when he goes riding in the afternoons. I can’t believe he still insists on riding. At least he is willing to let Dushan Makovitsky ride behind him. A few days ago he took a frightful spill, and came home covered with black mud. But I said nothing about the incident. It would only have upset him.

  Miss Natalya Alexevna Almedingen arrived yesterday. An elegant woman, she edits a magazine and writes popular books for children. Quietly, she has been talking to me about the deal with Prozveshenye (whom she apparently represents). They are desperate to get Lyovochka’s copyright. If I can induce him to sign a statement, even a tentative, noncommittal statement, this will be useful. I must stop Chertkov while there is time.

  We have other visitors, as usual. There is the talkative Gastev, who comes full of gossip, and Lyovochka takes it in quite eagerly. Tanya is here again. And Sergey, who plays chess with his father twice a day. I wonder how I tolerate these crowds.

  Everything has been going well for a little bit, so I was saddened when I discovered that Bulgakov had taken a letter to Telyatinki this morning. Sasha made a note of this, and I found the note on her desk in the Remington room.

  ‘Who was the letter for?’ I asked her.

  ‘Galya,’ she said.

  Why was my husband writing to Chertkov’s wife? I went straight to his study to ask him.

  ‘You sent a letter to Galya Chertkova this morning,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps I did. It should not concern you.’ He hunched over his desk, continuing to work.

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘I forget,’ he said. ‘Old men forget things.’

  ‘Please, darling. You needn’t treat me like a child.’

  ‘I simply don’t recall what was in that letter.’

  ‘You’re lying to me.’

  He squirmed in his chair. I had him now!

  ‘Let me see a copy of that letter,’ I said.

  ‘Never!’ He stood up, looking like Jove himself, his fists full of lightning. He would have struck me dead if he could have.

  ‘There was a time when you would never have screamed like that,’ I said. ‘A time when you loved me.’

  He withered into his chair. I saw before me an old, sick man – the ghost of the man I love, that I have loved more than life itself, for nearly fifty years. Why doesn’t he know this? Why can’t he feel the presence of my love?

  ‘I wish you would leave me alone,’ he said. ‘I want to be alone.’

  ‘You are alone, Lyovochka. We are both alone. We have been alone for some time.’

  ‘I must go away.’

  ‘You have already gone,’ I said. ‘I live alone here.’

  I left in control, but as soon as I stepped outside the study I had to brace myself by leaning with my back to the wall. My legs could barely hold me. My life could barely hold me.

  ‘Lyovochka,’ I said, muttering into my fingers. I shook all over. I waited for his hand to touch my shoulder. For his big shadow to loom, to cover me as night covers the fields. To be led to my bed, to be held, to be loved.

  But he never came.

  He will never come again.

  33

  Bulgakov

  Last night I slept in my little room at Telyatinki, which always reminds me of Masha. I see her in every object in the room, feel her presence. I want her beside me, touching me. I read and reread her letters, and I feel guilty. It is all wrong to have come to Yasnaya Polyana to work with Tolstoy but to find myself dwelling compulsively on my relations with a woman.

  This separation, though painful, has made me vividly aware of my need for her. I can see the world more freshly through her eyes. Everything that happens to me takes on a delicious tint because of her.

  Lately, I have found myself in greater sympathy with the Tolstoyans, partly because it is so difficult to remain intimate with Sofya Andreyevna. She has grown testy and suspicious, more so than ever.

  Chertkov floats on air nowadays, smelling victory. Even so, his brittle relations with Sofya Andreyevna worry him, since they prevent easy access to Leo Nik
olayevich; he talks incessantly about ‘mending fences’ with her so that he might spend more time with the Master before he dies.

  I think Chertkov underestimates the intensity of her feelings about him. She does not merely dislike him. She loathes him.

  This morning, shortly after breakfast, I was summoned to the dining room in Telyatinki. Chertkov was seated on a high stool, looking radiant. Like a bride before the wedding. The atmosphere in the room was prickly and tense.

  I bowed to him, more emphatically than necessary.

  ‘There is news,’ he said. ‘Astonishing news, in fact.’

  I felt my stomach muscles tighten.

  Chertkov maintained a cool demeanor. ‘Leo Nikolayevich has left,’ he said. He plucked each word from space as if with tongs, laying them on a bone china plate. ‘He left this morning, with Dushan. Nobody knows where they have gone.’

  This came like a death in the family after a protracted illness. In such cases, one regrets the loss but is also relieved.

  ‘Go to Sofya Andreyevna,’ Chertkov said. ‘Find out what you can, and report to me later in the day.’

  I set out immediately for Yasnaya Polyana, arriving at about eleven; Sofya Andreyevna had only just awakened, having passed a sleepless night. Her eyes were puffy and red, her cheeks swollen, as if she had already been crying for several hours. But panic animated her now. She and Sasha and I converged, breathlessly, on the second-floor landing.

  ‘Where is he, Sasha?’ Sofya Andreyevna spoke with a rare intensity. ‘Where is Papa?’

  ‘He has left home.’

  ‘What do you mean, “left home”? When?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘This is impossible, Sasha!’

  ‘I’m telling you what happened, Mama. He is gone. I have no idea where. Nobody has.’

  Sofya Andreyevna staggered backward, her mind a million leaves whirling in a dark wood. ‘He is gone,’ she repeated, testing the words.

  ‘Yes. He is gone,’ Sasha said.

  ‘Has he gone for good?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘With Dushan.’

  Then she became solicitous. ‘Darling Sasha, now tell me. Where has your father gone? I’m sure you know. You mustn’t play games with me … not now.’

  ‘I have no idea where he went. He said nothing specific. But he gave me a letter.’ She handed the letter to her mother.

  Sofya Andreyevna tore at the paper, holding her breath. She read it slowly, moving her lips:

  My departure will grieve you. I am sorry about this, but please understand and believe I cannot do otherwise. My position in this house has become intolerable. Along with everything else, I can no longer abide these luxurious conditions. What I am now doing is what old people have commonly done – leave their worldly life behind to spend their last days in peace and solitude.

  Please understand this and do not attempt to follow me, even if you discover my whereabouts. This would only worsen your position and mine. It would not change my decision.

  I am grateful to you for your honest forty-eight years of life with me, and I ask you to forgive me for everything I am guilty of before you, as I, with all my heart, forgive you for what you may be guilty of before me. I advise you to adjust to the new conditions of life you will face on my departure, and to bear me no ill will.

  If you wish to write to me, tell Sasba. She will know my whereabouts and send me anything I need; but she cannot tell you where I am, since I have made her promise to tell no one.

  The letter, dated 28 October, was signed in the usual scrawling hand.

  Sofya Andreyevna’s face began to quiver, her cheeks like sheets drying in the wind, cracked and blown. The muscles in her neck, like cords, stood out boldly now, as if trying to maintain the balance of her immense head. Her shoulders began to shake. Within a moment, she drew up her floor-length dress and ran down the stairs, howling, out the front door. From the window, we caught a glimpse of her streaking across the lawn.

  ‘She’s heading for the pond!’ cried Sasha. ‘Go after her!’

  Following directly in Sasha’s path, I squinted into the sun and saw Sofya Andreyevna’s figure, a large, gray blur, disappear into a stand of beeches. She ran faster than I could believe was possible for a woman of her age and size.

  A couple of servants raced behind me. There was Semen Nikolayevich, the cook, and Vanya, the fat manservant, who ran on spindly legs that barely held him up. I saw Timothy, too – the bastard son – with his toothless grin, waving from a tree.

  Sofya Andreyevna had by now passed the beeches and was headed through a grove of lime trees toward the pond. Sasha was behind me, shouting. ‘Don’t run so fast!’

  But it would not do to linger. Sofya Andreyevna was nearing the pond. I could just see her in the distance, her white calves flashing.

  Suddenly, Sasha passed me, huffing like a steam engine, her skirts wheeling in the sun. Now she was shouting, ‘Hurry! Hurry!’

  Sofya Andreyevna stood on the planks by the bathhouse where the women bend to wash the linen. She turned, saw us running toward her, and rushed out onto the wooden bridge. But the slats were slippery, and she fell hard on her back. She clawed at the surface with her red hands, to no avail, and rolled off sideways into the black water.

  Sasha was well ahead of me now, approaching the bridge at full tilt. She had managed, while she ran, to tear off her thickly knit wool sweater. But the mossy slats toppled her, too, and she skidded onto her backside. By the time I reached the bridge, she had scrambled to her feet and jumped into the pond ahead of me. I kicked off my boots and followed, jumping feet first into the icy water.

  Water is a strange dimension, one that alters the geometry of movement. It makes space and time seem oddly irrational. I seemed to experience a thousand images and thoughts in the brief moments after I hit the water and before I spotted Sofya Andreyevna floating with her cheeks puffed like the gills of a tropical fish.

  The distance between me and Sofya Andreyevna seemed infinite, and I felt dizzy now, my skin tingling, my breath short. The murky water was bitter, having been chilled by several terribly cold nights.

  Sofya Andreyevna suddenly bobbed to the surface like an otter, face up, about ten yards away. She looked dead already, with water trickling into her open mouth, then slipped completely under once again.

  Sasha, who can barely swim herself, was thrashing about not far away, trying to reach her mother without success.

  ‘Get back to the dock, Sasha!’ I shouted.

  ‘Help!’

  I reached for her hand and helped her back to the wooden dock.

  ‘She’s drowning!’

  ‘You mustn’t try to help!’ I said. ‘I can manage!’

  Though we were face to face, I was shouting.

  Pushing away from the dock, I made a sharp plunge in what seemed like the right direction and, after an impossibly long time, perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, touched Sofya Andreyevna’s head. Snarling my fingers in her long hair, which had come undone in the water, I dragged her back to the bank, rolling her large body up along the margin of the pond. She was black with mud, her eyes closed, her tongue lolling between her teeth.

  ‘She’s dead!’ Sasha was crying. ‘My mother is dead!’

  Vanya, the overweight manservant, was beside Sofya Andreyevna now, and he seemed to know what to do. He turned her over on her stomach and pushed some water from her lungs with his knees, astride her like one hippo mounting another. She lay there in silence, in what I imagined was agony, a great, dark slab of a woman. In a few moments, she was breathing normally, her eyes closed. Life had returned to torture her for another while.

  When she was able to stand, we led her back to the house, stopping to rest every few minutes. At one point she fell sobbing to the ground, saying, ‘Let me die here! Let me die! Why must you all rob me of my death?’

  Finally, Vanya and I made a seat with our hands and carried her to the house. She was shudderin
g throughout, and her lips were dark blue. Before we even got her into bed, however, she told Vanya to go immediately to the station to inquire what train her husband had taken.

  She fell into a kind of stupor and slept for an hour, but when she woke she began beating her breast with a stone paperweight. We took away the paperweight as well as the penknife on her desk and the vial of opium in her dresser drawer.

  Sasha, who seemed quite unstable herself now, sent to Tula for the psychiatric doctor who had helped Sofya Andreyevna during previous crises. She also summoned the Sukhotins by telegram.

  When Vanya returned with news of the train Leo Nikolayevich had taken, Sofya Andreyevna wrote a telegram, which she addressed to Train Number 9. It said, ‘Dearest Papa: Return at once, Sasha.’ She had told Vanya to show it to no one, but – thank goodness – he showed the telegram to Sasha (since, like most of the servants, he is loyal to Leo Nikolayevich and dislikes Sofya Andreyevna). Sasha let the telegram go but sent with it one of her own telling her father to ignore all telegrams supposedly from her that were not signed ‘Alexandra.’ Sasha enjoys these little deceits. She is not unlike her mother in this regard.

  I sat in the Remington room with Sasha throughout the long afternoon. She told me frankly that she didn’t know where her father had gone. Indeed, his remark in the letter to her mother had puzzled her. He had told several people, including her, that he would probably visit his sister, a nun at the Shamardino, in the province of Kaluga. This was, as he put it, ‘on his way.’ But where he planned to go after visiting Shamardino was anyone’s guess.

  Having talked to Sasha and several of the house servants, I was able to piece together what happened last night.

  Near midnight, Leo Nikolayevich had been awakened by the sound of rustling papers in his study. It was Sofya Andreyevna, who was looking for concrete evidence of a new will. This was the last straw. A few hours later, he knocked quietly on the door of Sasha and Varvara Mikhailovna, who share a small room on the same floor.