The Last Station

36 Sasha

I traveled to Shamardino with Varvara Mikhailovna just two days after Papa. Chertkov told me exactly where to find them.

All day we felt free, Varvara and I, riding in a second-class carriage with the golden sun of October glazing the stubble fields on either side of the train as we rode southward. We would lunge through a deep pine forest, full of shadows, then burst onto open plains. We would rise over small hills, descend into valleys, then pass beneath rocky cliffs. We both sat tensely in our seats, upright, gazing at the wonder of creation.

When I think of the world’s great beauty, I am saddened by humankind. We have nothing to match it. Our souls are dirty, soiled by greed, by hatred of differences.

Occasionally Varvara would reach across the seat and touch my hand. It moved me to tears. There is such love between us. It makes the bright world all the more blazing.

I had brought with me a cache of letters from my brothers, from Tanya and Mama. I had not, of course, read them, but I knew they would cause Papa a good deal of pain. What he required now was release. It seems we cannot let him die in peace.

Near dusk, we arrived at the white-walled nunnery at Shamardino, where my aunt now lives. She is an Orthodox Christian who adheres slavishly to the letter of the law, but she and Papa have remained on excellent terms. We went straight to my aunt’s narrow cell. I hardly recognized her. A dried-out little fig of a woman in a dark habit, she was taken aback when I entered.

‘A family conference?’ she said, with only a whiff of cynicism.

A nun should never be ironic, and she knew that.

‘Where is my father?’

‘Sit down, my dear,’ she said. She pointed a crooked finger at Varvara Mikhailovna. ‘And you, sit. Who is this young woman you have brought with you?’

I introduced my aunt to my companion, who looked fresh and fine in a peasant dress with yellow embroidery on the neckline. Her dark hair shone in the candlelight.

‘Alexandra Lvovna!’ cried Papa, who stood frozen in the doorway.

‘Papa!’

We embraced tightly, and he wept. I knew at once that he was glad to see me.

‘And you, Varvara,’ he said, cupping her chin in his hand.

He studied her like a bronze statue, then turned to me. ‘I hope your mother has not accompanied you?’

‘She is at home. But she is suffering.’

Papa shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.

‘There was nothing else you could do.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Nevertheless, if something happens to her, it will sadden me. She is still my wife. One can’t avoid a sense of responsibility for things….’

‘She wants you back. You must know that.’

He shifted again, uncomfortably. ‘I have found an isba to rent,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the floor. ‘It’s a pleasant little hut within the sound of church bells. A good place to end my days, Sasha. I shall read and think and, perhaps, even write a little.’

‘Mama will find you. She will drag you home.’

Varvara Mikhailovna squeezed my wrist. Enough.

‘You’re right, I’m afraid,’ Papa answered. ‘We must leave before she finds us here.’

A servant passed in the hallway, and my aunt called to her for tea. ‘Sit down,’ she said to us. ‘This useless chatter upsets everyone.’

Papa bent to kiss his sister on the brow. ‘I cannot stay, though I would like to.’

I gave Papa the letters, and he took them reluctantly and went back to his room to read them.

Later that night, we sat about in Papa’s room, planning our next move. A fire in the stony hearth gave off the sweet odor of peat.

‘If we are to go,’ said Dushan Makovitsky, with his penchant for truisms, ‘we must know where we are going.’

‘Excellent, Dushan Petrovich,’ Varvara said, though I was the only one in the room who caught her sarcastic undertone. ‘Let us go somewhere.’

Papa seemed quite eager to discuss possible routes. It was suggested that Bulgaria or Turkey might be good destinations – nobody would know us there, and the climate would be tolerable. I wondered, however, if we might not need passports to cross the border. Why not settle in the Caucasus? There are several Tolstoyan colonies there, and they would be only too flattered if Leo Tolstoy himself chose to pass his final days among them.

We had been debating the pros and cons of the Caucasus for a while when, unexpectedly, Papa began to speak in an angry voice. It was quite unlike him. ‘No! I cannot stand these projections, these ridiculous plans. Let us go… anywhere will do. We need no plans.’

Papa has always avoided plans, preferring the spontaneity of a butterfly. He likes to point out that Christ himself was against plotting the future.

‘I am very tired,’ Papa said.

‘Let me take you to your bed, Papa.’

I led him to a cot in the small room with whitewashed walls and a vaulted ceiling. The bed table had been laid out just like at home, with a candle, some matches, a notebook, and sharpened pencils. He likes to be able to make notes in the middle of the night if he should awaken with an idea or want to record a dream.

He lay down gingerly. He was so exhausted he did not even want me to remove his boots, though I covered him with a rough wool blanket, since the room was very cold. He was asleep before I left, snoring through his wrinkled mouth. It worried me that his breathing was so uneven.

I slept in a room with several other women and Varvara Mikhailovna. It was a peculiar, disorienting experience. The room smelled of beeswax and disinfectant. A filthy cat slept under my cot, making my eyes itch. An old woman coughed in her sleep like a goat on the hillside. I was freezing.

Somehow, I managed to fall asleep. But Varvara Mikhailovna woke me at four, pricking the bubble of my dreaming with her sharp words.

‘Wake up, Sasha! We’re leaving. Your father wants to go while it’s dark. He thinks Sofya Andreyevna is closing in.’

I hated the cynical note she had been adopting. ‘It’s not possible,’ I said.

‘You frightened him last night. He thinks your mother is planning to follow you. He won’t be convinced otherwise.’

‘This is insane. Papa can’t stand this kind of shifting about.’

I saw Dushan Makovitsky in his nightdress, standing in the doorway with a candle. He had come to wake us and was waving frantically. His feet were bony and bare.

The road to the station at Kozelsk was full of ruts and runnels. Parts of it had been washed away by a recent storm, and there was a lengthy detour through a farmer’s turnip patch. Though the station was only nine miles away, it took hours to get there. The droshky we had borrowed from the nuns seemed barely to hang together. Papa groaned as the wheels rattled over each bump, and I knew now that he was dying. The glaze of his eyes frightened me. He seemed already to have abandoned the life of this world, though he had not yet entered the next one. I wanted to weep but restrained myself.

We took the first southbound train from Kozelsk, aiming vaguely for my cousin’s estate near Novocherkassk. Denisenko is fond of Papa, and they have recently been in correspondence. Papa seemed to approve of this plan, even though it would take at least twenty-four hours to get there.

‘Leo Nikolayevich is well enough for such a journey?’ Varvara asked Dushan.

‘He’s in reasonably good shape,’ he said.

Dushan Makovitsky is an optimist, as I am. We wanted very much to push straight through to Novocherkassk, if possible. But Papa looked ghastly when we got to the station, his eyes clouding over, his hands trembling.

‘Are you sure you’re able to travel, Papa?’

He looked at me askance, hurting my feelings.

‘Do you feel well enough, Leo Nikolayevich?’ Dushan asked him, taking his pulse. ‘There is no point in damaging your health.’

‘We have to go, Dushan. I have no choice.’

‘Pulse – seventy-six. Excellent,’ announced Dushan, as if my father’s health were his invention.

‘I think we should stay here,’ said Varvara. ‘Sofya Andreyevna will not follow. Tanya is with her.’

But the decision had already been made, and Papa was not going to change his mind.

‘Please get me the newspapers,’ he said. Whenever he begins a journey by train, he buys all the papers.

Dushan Makovitsky bought the papers, but I could see by his dour expression that something was amiss.

‘Read the headlines,’ he said, pointing to the front page of one paper. It read: TOLSTOY ABANDONS HOME! WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN! Another paper said: SAGE OF YASNAYA POLYANA TAKES FLIGHT!

Papa leafed through them and shook his head. ‘They know everything,’ he said. ‘It’s no use.’

Everyone in the railway car was yammering about the headlines, embarrassing Papa. A dapper fellow behind us in an English waistcoat said, ‘He’s given her the slip. Good for him!’ His friend, a slightly older man, gave a wink and said, ‘She wasn’t giving him what he wanted, eh?’ They both giggled like schoolboys. Papa’s face took on the impassive but depthless quality of stamped tin. He clenched his fists.

‘It’s Leo Tolstoy! That’s him!’ a man shouted.

Dushan Makovitsky ran to quiet him, but it was too late. Everyone in the carriage instantly realized that Tolstoy was there. They had all seen his picture in the newspapers, and he does not resemble many people, with his white beard and wild, snowy eyebrows. I looked back at the men who’d been gossiping about him so gaily and enjoyed their panic. The older man, in particular, looked as though he’d been caught naked in the Winter Palace by the tsar himself.

‘Be sure your sins shall find you out,’ Dushan whispered in a voice just audible to the men.

I saw Varvara Mikhailovna wince, and I pinched her. Dushan saw the pinch and blushed. He muttered something, but I ignored it. I love to embarrass him.

As word spread through the train that Tolstoy was aboard, crowds gathered in the passageways at either end of the carriage. Curiosity seekers kept passing us in the aisles, gawking at the most famous Russian in the world. I was oddly proud of being the daughter of Leo Tolstoy just then, but I felt protective, too. I hated their insolence, their scummy faces, the incessant leering and pothering. Who did they think they were?

I asked the conductor to control the crowd, and he agreed to help, bowing and saying, ‘Yes, Your Excellency. Anything you wish, Your Excellency.’ This particular address seemed out of place in a rather scrubby, second-class carriage; anyway, I object to such forms of subservient behavior, although the man’s solicitude was useful for the moment.

I heated some barley soup for Papa over an oil stove at the back of the carriage, with Dushan, who had become rather talkative. He likes it that Papa is a famous man.

‘You should have seen the fuss on the way to Optina,’ he said. ‘Everyone gathered around him in the railway car, asking questions about God, about the proper form of government, about taxes. You should have seen your father! He stood in the center of the carriage and lectured for an hour about Henry George and his theory of the single tax. A man who had just left his home of eighty-two years! And he’d had no sleep the night before, either. Not a wink. He’s remarkable. A remarkable man.’

This story puzzled and mildly upset me. Was Papa so detached, so unemotional, that he could focus on a theory of taxation in the midst of the most stressful time of his life? Was he superhuman or… inhuman? On the other hand, he can be so lovable, so considerate. He responds directly, unpretentiously, to all who address him, house servants or heads of state. When he looks at you with that flinty stare, you daren’t say a thing you don’t mean.

We gave Papa the barley soup with a bit of cracknel Dushan had brought along, and he seemed grateful. He sat in the sun that pushed itself through the train window and lay, as if sourceless, on the shiny metal floor. Afterward, he fell asleep, in spite of the rattling and swaying of the carriage, the whining of the rails, the stench of soot that blew back from the engine. I covered him with a blanket, letting him curl up on a seat by himself.

At one station, two men got on the train who looked as if they were on a mission of no good. They stood at the back of the carriage, stealing glances at us, pretending to smoke and talk to each other. I grew suspicious and called the conductor.

‘Yes, Your Excellency?’

‘Those men… see them?’

‘I do, Your Excellency.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Policemen, Your Excellency. For your protection.’

Papa unexpectedly sat up, confused and ill. ‘Where are we now?’ he asked, loudly.

Dushan ran to his side. ‘It’s all right, Leo Nikolayevich. Everything is fine.’ He eased my father back onto his side and took his temperature. It was 102.5!

‘Dushan!’ I cried.

He seemed shaken, too. ‘He will be fine. Everything will be fine,’ he said. But I could tell by the squint of his eyes that he did not believe a word of this.

Papa reached out for my hand. ‘Listen to Dushan, darling. I’m feeling much better now… just need a little sleep.’ He scarcely had the strength to squeeze my wrist.

I bent over Papa and began to weep. I couldn’t help it. The smoke in the carriage was so thick, and there were so many strangers crowding around us. It was horrid. Even Varvara Mikhailovna seemed distant, lost in a mood I couldn’t fathom. She had been testy, impatient, even bitchy, throughout the day. I did not see how we could possibly make it to Novocherkassk.

Two, perhaps three, hours later, Dushan whispered to me that Papa’s fever was rising. He was quite panicky now. Pretending was of no use.

‘We can’t go on!’ I said.

Dushan shook his head. But what could we do?

The train lurched and made the familiar screeching sounds of metal rubbing against metal. A small, dusty station drew up beside our window: Astapovo.

‘This will do,’ said Dushan. ‘We can spend the night here, if need be. Your father is too sick to travel. He wants complete rest, perhaps for several days.’ He bit his top lip, which was quivering now. I think, at that moment, he saw his beautiful dreams of Turkey, Bulgaria, or the Caucasus dashed.

Several men stepped forward to help Papa from the train, while Varvara and I followed.

‘I’m sorry, Sasha. I really am,’ Varvara said.

‘About what?’

‘I feel… confused. I don’t know what I’m doing here.’

‘We love each other, don’t we? You are my old friend. I need you.’

She put her arms around me. ‘Am I horrible?’

‘Yes. You’re horrible,’ I said.

Hand in hand, we followed Papa and Dushan Makovitsky. Papa took each step with infinite premeditation, holding on to Dushan’s arm for balance. To be carried now would seem to admit defeat.

He sat on a wooden bench beside the station, holding a cane between his legs. His head slumped to his chest. His cheeks were slightly damp.

Dushan went to speak with the stationmaster, who had a house nearby where, we hoped, Papa could rest for a few days. It was a small cottage with a bright tin roof; its mud-plaster walls were painted red. It was only fifty or so steps from the tracks – which meant it would be noisy – but it was set in a little garden.

‘Leo Nikolayevich will be comfortable here,’ Dushan told us. He seemed confident again, to my relief. ‘The stationmaster says we may have his guest room for as long as we should need it. There are no inns nearby, so we’re lucky he is generous. The rest of us can sleep in the station itself, in the waiting room. He will find cots.’

I watched Papa stagger into the tiny house – no bigger than one of our toolsheds at Yasnaya Polyana. I don’t know why, but I could not stop myself from crying, even though Varvara Mikhailovna squeezed my hand and pressed my head against her shoulder.

It seemed that we had come to the end of the world.