The Last Station

19 Chertkov

I thought of England this morning. The early light, soft and gray, had a wet, acidic tang. I stood at the window in my nightdress, watching through the mist, when a bright yellow oriole flashed into sight. Today I would see Leo Nikolayevich. And God had sent this oriole as a harbinger of joy.

I sat down on the bed, trembling. The years in England did much to gird my soul. I read and thought deeply. I made endless speeches on behalf of Leo Nikolayevich. I was greeted warmly everywhere from Southampton to Birmingham and Newcastle. Once, I even traveled into Scotland to address a group of Glaswegian shipbuilders who had a Tolstoy ‘study group.’ Most impressive. One cannot imagine that sort of thing happening in Russia. The only thing I disliked about England, apart from the essentially frivolous nature of the English mind, was the forced separation from my Master.

People are mistaken when they say I love the man. What I love is the Tolstoyan firmness, the call to truth and justice. The lineaments of his prose entangle, embody, render visible the elusive matter of these virtues.

We met at a time when my soul was just awakening. I looked on my life of luxury and privilege with contempt, seeing that I had contributed to the injustice of the world. I had added to its misery by remaining ignorant of what is cruel and unjust.

It was my assignment to a military hospital that alerted me to the truth. I found the hospital crammed, not only with the sick but with political prisoners of various stripes: pacifists, mystics, revolutionaries, Christians who refused to accept the violence of the state, brave men who did not find the tsar’s barbarous policies acceptable and dared to say so.

I resigned from the regiment and went to live by myself on an estate in Voronezh owned by my mother. It was a modest country house, with an adjoining farm. I felt marvelously solitary there, but I could not recover my former balance. The world seemed thin as rice paper, so fragile that at any moment ‘reality’ – which now looked like a tragic illusion – might break.

Bleakness overwhelmed me. I wakened each night with sweat beading my face, my breath shallow. I could feel my pulse throbbing in distant parts of my body, sounding in the void of the universe like deadly drumming. I was suffocating, but I clung to life as a drowning man clings to a piece of driftwood.

Both life and death seemed intolerable, terrifying. I shook like an old man, kneeling by my bed there, praying to a God whom I did not trust.

It is not an easy thing to alter the trajectory of your life. People have expectations on your behalf. You come to believe them yourself. When I began to live my life according to new principles, my family and friends dismissed it as youthful folly. Friends and relatives turned against me when I persisted. They said I would end up like the Decembrists, whom I emulated – in Siberia or on the gallows.

My mother and I had tea, once, at a fashionable Moscow restaurant. The luxury of the establishment offended me deeply, and she knew that, which was why she insisted on meeting me there.

‘Your father,’ she said, ‘would have been crushed.’

‘By the fact that I have chosen to live according to a set of principles, instead of wasting my time and money?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Father is dead.’

‘Thank goodness. It would have been too awful for him.’

‘I embarrass you,’ I said. ‘Fortunately, what you think about me – or anything – hardly matters.’

She affected tears. It was deeply boring but difficult to ignore.

‘The fact is that you find my refusal to become a playboy and spendthrift distasteful,’ I said.

‘You are a young man, Vladimir. Someday you will regret the way you speak to me now.’

‘I daresay you’re right, as usual,’ I said, trying to control my snicker.

‘Do as you choose, Vladimir. You will anyway. But remember. You are a Chertkov.’

For months, we hardly spoke. But I am her son, after all, and we have in recent years arrived at a truce. She puts my interest in Tolstoy down to ‘eccentricity,’ which has given her a way of talking about me to her friends. I let her indulge herself in this fantasy.

Gradually, the Lord has narrowed my enemies to only one person: Sofya Andreyevna. She has never understood. She has not even tried. So Leo Nikolayevich must live in a perpetual state of compromise, preaching poverty and obedience to the will of God while surrounded by every kind of luxury and worldliness. It is no wonder his disciples, upon seeing Yasnaya Polyana for the first time, often retreat in disillusion.

Leo Nikolayevich has talked of leaving her. Indeed, he has often swerved in the direction of abandoning his life at Yasnaya Polyana, a life that has grown more painful as the contradictions become more evident. What he will do, I cannot say. But he must do something.

In midsummer, two years ago, he fell gravely ill. The sickness seemed a combination of spiritual crisis and physical ailment. As I leaf through his diary of that period (which I keep hidden in a strong-box at Telyatinki), I find the tenor of his voice unmistakable.

2 July 1908

If I had heard of myself as an outsider – of a man living in luxury, wringing all he can from the peasants, locking them up in prison, while preaching and professing Christianity and giving away small change, and for all his loathsome actions sheltering himself behind his dear wife – I would not hesitate to call him a scoundrel! and that is just what I need that I may be set free from the praises of men and live for my soul….

2 July 1908, later in the day

Doubts have come into my mind whether I do right to be silent, and even whether it would not be better for me to go away, to disappear. I refrain from doing this principally because it would be for my own sake, in order to escape from a life poisoned on every side.

3 July 1908

It is still agonizing. Life here at Yasnaya Polyana is completely poisoned. Wherever I turn, it is shame and suffering….

6 July 1908

Help me, O Lord! Again I long to go away, and I do not make up my mind to do so, yet I do not give up on the idea. The great point is: whether I would be doing it for my own sake if I went away. That I am not doing it for my own sake in staying, that much I know for certain….

9 July 1908

One thing grows more and more excruciating: the injustice of the senseless luxury in the midst of which I am living with undeserved poverty and want all around me. I feel worse and worse, more and more wretched. I cannot forget, I cannot help seeing what I see.

Doubtless it was God’s will that he should live. Shortly after, we went walking in Zasyeka Wood, he moving very slowly, as when he is lost in thought. It was oppressively hot that summer, the air sticking to the skin like beeswax. I said, ‘Dear friend, I sense that you are suffering.’

He turned to me with his face shining, his eyes glittering like crystals. ‘I’ve been thinking a great deal of late, thinking very deeply. And it has become clear to me that when one stands at the parting of ways and does not know which way to act, one ought surely to give preference to the decision which involves the most self-sacrifice.’

I understood by this remark that he had chosen to remain with Sofya Andreyevna. Surely nothing could be more painful than that. But I refrained from comment. I have tried, repeatedly, to remind myself that Leo Nikolayevich has devoted himself to Sofya Andreyevna for nearly five decades; he has borne her prattling, her violent temper, the indignities she heaps upon him daily. I thank God that Anna Konstantinovna has never wavered in her devotion to righteousness. She has labored beside me, never questioning the justice of my activity. She understands that a woman’s role is to encourage and sustain the intellectual and moral work undertaken by her husband.

As the troika took me through the foggy countryside to Kochety, I recalled a similar morning in 1883 when, fortuitously, I found myself on the same train from Moscow to Petersburg with Leo Nikolayevich. I had, indeed, heard of Leo Tolstoy and his writing before this meeting. Once I saw him across a crowded room in Moscow: his features remained vividly in my head – the ruddy bulb of his nose, the wispy beard, which had not yet turned white.

He was alone on the train, reading, and though I was assigned a different seat, I decided to risk offense and sit across from him. Having only lately read one of his books, I felt confident of my ability to engage him in conversation.

Seeing me, he put his book aside. Our eyes met sharply.

‘Count Tolstoy?’

He raised his eyebrows.

I mentioned the reception, which he seemed not to recall. ‘I am a great admirer of yours,’ I continued. ‘Though I take issue with some of the things you have written about the Cossacks.’ He romanticized them, I suggested. To my surprise, he quickly agreed. I have since learned that Leo Nikolayevich likes nothing better than serious readers who will take the trouble to contradict him.

We swiftly became friends, sharing many ideas and preoccupations, ideals, future plans. Had Sofya Andreyevna not made it difficult for us to continue our relations, there is no telling what we might have accomplished.

From a narrow, personal perspective, I have gained immensely from my contact with Leo Nikolayevich. I treasure the letters he has written to me over the years, especially the one dated 7 November 1884. ‘I would very much like to live with you,’ he wrote.

The directness of the man, the willingness to speak his emotions, his thoughts, clearly and boldly, has never ceased to shock me. I have, indeed, loved him as dearly as one can love another man.

The matter of his will continues to torment us all. The great novels, his diaries, and correspondence remain in the hands of Sofya Andreyevna. Far from seeing that this work receive the widest dissemination among the people, she wants to ensure that it can be published only in the most expensive and, for her, most profitable editions. Alas, she has Leo Nikolayevich cornered, and he cannot see a way around her.

I, however, shall propose that he make me the executor of his work. I can produce it cheaply and distribute it to the muzhiks. This will be the grandest of gifts to the Russian people. Ad majorem Dei gloriam, as the Jesuits say.

I felt quite faint with anticipation as the troika wobbled along the muddy road to the front door of Kochety. We had barely come to a halt when Leo Nikolayevich rushed out to greet me, his face full of expectation and love. I was, as ever, overwhelmed by my dear friend’s affection, so childlike and unqualified as we embraced, his face wet with tears. Indeed, my driver was embarrassed, turning away from us.

Perhaps those years I spent in England are at fault, but I confess that open displays of emotion unsettle me. Though I tried to respond to Leo Nikolayevich in kind, I shrank from him instinctively.

We went immediately to my room to talk over various publishing projects. Leo Nikolayevich expressed his satisfaction with young Bulgakov, whom I have come to distrust. He has been sending the most idiotic, unhelpful reports from Yasnaya Polyana. He is vain enough to imagine that I should actually want to hear his running commentary on Tolstoyan texts.

Although I tried, delicately, to bring the conversation to the matter of his will, Leo Nikolayevich sensed the drift of my language and emphasized his commitment to Sofya Andreyevna.

‘I couldn’t do it,’ he said, his voice faltering.

I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I will never ask you to do anything against your better judgment. You must trust me.’

‘I trust you entirely,’ he said, standing, putting his arms around me, kissing me on either cheek. ‘Always, my friend.’

I told him that I had recently bought a new house, near Moscow, in Meshcherskoye. It is a lovely, secluded little estate, purchased with an inheritance recently passed on from a distant uncle. I said that he must come very soon to see it, since I have assembled a group of Tolstoyans – young men mostly, from the university – who will live there with me and help me in the work at hand. To my astonishment, he accepted instantly.

‘I shall come soon. In a few weeks!’ he said. ‘Perhaps Sasha will come with us. She is doing so well, you know. Recovering in the Crimea. Her doctor has written a most encouraging letter.’

The poor, dear man. I held him close to me, and we kissed once more on either cheek. For a long moment, we encountered each other with the rarest intimacy. Then we heard the rustle of carriage wheels, dogs barking, and the shouts of many servants. Soon the shrill voice of Sofya Andreyevna rose above the clatter: defiant, self-righteous, commanding.

‘Sonya!’ said Leo Nikolayevich, sucking in his lower lip. ‘She has found us, I’m afraid. I half-expected her.’

I touched him on the wrist. ‘You must come to me alone at Meshcherskoye,’ I said. ‘Forbid her to come. Do you understand?’

‘That cannot be done.’

‘It can!’ I insisted. ‘It would be good for her. She doesn’t realize it, but it would benefit her marriage. A husband and wife sometimes have to put time as well as distance between themselves to survive.’

He looked at me with his sad, large eyes and said nothing. I have to make him understand.