‘When I wrote Childhood, I was convinced that no one before me had portrayed the poetry of childhood in that particular way. But I will say it again: in literature, as in life, one must horde one’s bounty. Don’t you think?’
I nodded. What could I say?
‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ Leo Nikolayevich asked. I do not intend to lose my soul, I thought. Not for anything.
He abruptly turned and left for his study. I consoled myself that he was lost in meditation. I mean very little in the larger context of his life. He hardly knows me. I have entered his life at the end.
I was left with a moving letter to type on his behalf, a response to a peasant who had written with concern over the contradictions in the count’s life. Leo Nikolayevich answered him:
You ask if I like the life I am currently leading. I do not. Emphatically. I dislike it because I live with my family in ridiculous luxury, while all around me there is poverty and need, and I seem unable to extricate myself from the luxury or answer the needs of the people. I hate this. But what I do appreciate about my life is that I try to do what is within my power, to the extent of my power, to follow Christ’s precept and love God and my neighbor. To love God means to love what is good and draw near it. To love your neighbor means to love all men equally as our brothers and sisters. It is to this, and this alone, that I aspire. Since I am approaching this ideal, little by little, though imperfectly, I refuse to despair. Indeed, I rejoice.
When I finished typing, I went to his study for a signature. Getting no response to a knock, I walked in to find him sleeping with his head on the desk. It was noon exactly. I put a hand on his shoulder and set down the letter so that when he woke he would find it.
Without warning, he lifted his head. ‘I’m afraid my powers of work exist in inverse proportion to my desire to work,’ he said. ‘In the past, I often lacked the desire to work. But now, near the end of my life, I find I have to restrain it.’
That afternoon, he seemed much livelier. Goldenweiser, the pianist, arrived with his frowsy wife, cheering the company with his broad jokes and genial manner. Dushan Makovitsky withdrew from the house immediately. His anti-Semitism is quite spectacular in its vehemence, though totally irrational; Leo Nikolayevich has told him so.
Sofya Andreyevna begged Goldenweiser to play, though this was a mere formality. He would have been crushed had she not. The man adores attention, and he does play well – better than Sofya Andreyevna, to be sure.
I hoped that it might be possible to slip away before the little concert began, but Leo Nikolayevich ushered me into the drawing room with a hand on my shoulder. ‘Come and listen,’ he said. ‘You like music, don’t you?’
Indeed. Back in Moscow, I had been tremendously interested in opera. I took lessons in singing throughout my boyhood and youth, and at one point went so far as to consider a musical career. The only thing I lacked, it seemed, was talent.
Goldenweiser swayed over the keyboard in a kind of trance, his chin to the ceiling. I was stirred by the performance and watched Leo Nikolayevich as the notes played over his ragged face and his brow loosened; his cheeks were sucked and blown; the white, bushy eyebrows twitched. His eyes blackened, like holes pricked in the visible surface of the world, deepening into eternity. Tears stained his cheeks.
When Goldenweiser had completed Chopin’s Étude in E major, opus 10, Leo Nikolayevich sighed. ‘When a lovely piece of music pleases you, you imagine that you wrote it yourself,’ he said.
‘Chopin considered that étude among his finest compositions,’ said Goldenweiser. ‘I am so glad you like it, Leo Nikolayevich.’
‘If a man came down from Mars and said this étude was worthless, I would dispute him. But there is one thing that worries me. This music would be incomprehensible to the common people.’ He went on to say that he loved music above all the arts, however, even if it has no social value or intellectual content.
As I rode home through the sharp afternoon light, the stubble fields were yellow and damp, the willows flush with new leaves. I found myself thinking about Leo Nikolayevich. I love him, and I can hardly bear it that he is eighty-two and must soon die. But he would hate knowing that such a thing upsets me. And, of course, I have no reason to be so upset. I am not his son, not even a nephew or, for that matter, a friend of long standing. yet I feel that God has connected us in some mysterious way, has brought us together for reasons unknown, perhaps, to either of us.
Masha was not at Telyatinki when I arrived, and I felt uneasy about her absence. The prospect of spending the afternoon with Sergeyenko and his merry band did not excite me. I went straight to my room, hoping to get some work done. But I found it difficult to concentrate, thinking first of Masha, then of Leo Nikolayevich in his exhaustion. Life seemed terribly fragile to me, like a shimmering mirage.
I turned my mind once again to the Inner Chapters of Chuang Tsu, which Leo Nikolayevich had given me to search. I lit upon this passage:
The great ones of ancient times slept a dreamless sleep. They woke without fear. They ate simple food, and they breathed deeply. The breath of the great ones rose from their heels, in contrast to the mediocre people of today, whose breath rises from their throats like vomit. When they are filled with lust and desire, their heavenly nature grows shallow.
The great ones of ancient times knew nothing of loving life or death. They felt no elation at birth. They felt no sorrow when they entered death. Carefree they went and came. That was all. They delighted in what was given, but they gave it no further thought.
I am not among the great ones, but I understand what must be done – or not done – to become more like them. I have to give up desire and loathing. I have to delight in what happens, whatever is given. I should not struggle or exert my own petty will.
I knelt beside the bed and prayed to become nothing, to accept life and death, loving neither overmuch, giving myself to the currents of eternal being that moved through me. When I stood, I felt cleansed and whole. A new spirit burned in my heart, as if God had touched me invisibly. The room was bathed in dusky light, with a red – almost peach – glow on the bare walls; I sat on my cane chair and watched it, the simple color of sunset as it flickered against the whitewashed plaster.
The image of Masha’s face floated into my head; since it was nearly time for dinner, I decided to look for her.
The door to her room was ajar, and I knocked lightly. She didn’t answer, so I pushed it open.
‘Masha!’ I whispered.
She was not there. I should have turned back, but I noticed a diary on her bed table. It was no more than a few feet away. My heart thudding against my neck muscles, I shut the door. The red ball sun was caught in the window and flared on the little notebook’s roughcut pages. The diary opened to my name.
Valentin Fedorovich. His soft beard, the smell of his shirt at night: woodsmoke, oil. He is a simple creature, I think, with a decent heart. He does not know himself. He is probably not a true Tolstoyan, though be imagines that he is. As I do. One lives in hope.
I could scarcely hold the notebook now, turning the pages with trembling fingers. Sweat fell along my sleeves from under my arms, chilling me, as a particular line flashed from the page: ‘I may indeed love him. He does not love me.’