‘Papa, you would never…’
‘I can’t say what I would or wouldn’t do,’ he replied.
I walked away from this conversation less horrified than awestruck. I felt sure that, whatever came between him and Mama, he would behave in a reasonable manner – even if everyone called him insane.
Tanya, my saintly sister, heard about the latest marital brushfires and decided to visit us. She is like a wandering bucket in search of a fire. But her generally beneficent temper has good effects on the household. Papa seems able to relax when she is here.
‘Your sister is so deliciously stupid,’ Varvara Mikhailovna said to me this morning, over breakfast. ‘She makes everyone else feel intelligent. That’s why she is popular.’
The current state of siege at Yasnaya Polyana shook my sister up so badly she insisted that we all return to Kochety with her. The atmosphere there is always restorative, what with Sukhotin’s genial pompousness and Tanya’s ministrations, the tinkle of children’s voices, the beautifully kept grounds and French cuisine. Kochety has the additional advantage of being out of Chertkov’s immediate range just now, which should increase my mother’s sense of well-being.
With very little discussion, everyone agreed to go. Yasnaya Polyana has become an emotional torture chamber.
We left for Kochety in mid-August, on a hazy day, in two carriages. I rode with Varvara Mikhailovna and Dushan Makovitsky in a cramped carriage with four trotters. My parents rode together in the first carriage with Tanya and a couple of servants. Everything went beautifully for three days, with Mama more relaxed than I have seen her in many months. There was not a word of animosity between her and Papa! Then, on the eighteenth of August, an article appeared in the local newspaper saying that the minister of the interior had granted Chertkov permanent residence in Tula.
Mama came into the breakfast room with the paper clutched in her hand like a strangled animal. ‘I will have Chertkov murdered. Either he dies, or I die. There can be no compromise.’
Papa’s face turned to chalk. ‘You all see what I endure,’ he shouted. ‘It’s… impossible!’
Mama glared at him, then fell hard onto the wide-plank floor-boards, hitting her head on the molding. A new maid screamed. Dushan Makovitsky hastened to Mama’s side and immediately took her pulse.
‘One hundred forty,’ he said. ‘Not serious.’ Rather too casually, he slapped her cheeks before putting salts to her nose.
Mama opened her eyes, slightly.
‘Sofya!’ Dushan said, loudly. ‘Open your eyes!’
‘My chest… my chest,’ she gasped, trying to catch her breath. ‘I have such a terrible pain. My heart! It’s my heart!’ She fell back with her eyes closed. Sarah Bernhardt could not have done better.
‘Is she dying?’ Tanya asked.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Dushan said. ‘It’s a mild case of shock.’
Mama was carried to her room by two young footmen in uniform, swinging between them like a large hammock. She was propped up in bed, pillows all around her.
I sat beside her with Papa, who smoldered still and volunteered nothing – not a word, not even a sigh. When Mama recovered consciousness, she seemed eerily calm, as radiant as a queen. She asked Papa to promise not to have himself photographed by Chertkov anymore.
‘You’re like an old coquet,’ she said. ‘It upsets the whole family, the way his pictures of you adorn every mediocre paper in Russia. You should have more pride!’
Papa, rather sheepishly, obliged her, saying he would no longer allow Chertkov to photograph him. This appeared to satisfy her, but Papa quickly made matters worse by saying that he did, however, reserve the right to address Chertkov by letter as often as he pleased.
This little maneuver pitched Mama into a turmoil. ‘Look at the way he insists on having the last twist to every argument!’ she said. ‘It’s diabolical!’
The next day she seized me, saying she hadn’t slept all night. ‘All I can think of,’ she said, quite breathless, her cheeks bright with fury, ‘is that, from now on, his letters will be full of unfair remarks about me, schemes and frightful lies – all written under the guise of Christian humility. Your father thinks he is Christ, Sasha. That’s a sin, you know. A soul can be condemned to hell for that.’
‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘Papa is extremely humble.’
‘He’s an egomaniac! He thinks he’s Christ, and he lets Chertkov play the role of chief disciple. It would be comical if it weren’t sick.’
Mama lay in bed at Kochety for days, feeding on sweets, drinking tea and chocolate, hunting through her husband’s early novels and stories for signs of perversion. In Childhood she found a description of a man called Sergey. She called Papa into her room and read the passage aloud to him in her ludicrous, stentorian way.
‘How is it that he prefers Chertkov, that obese, balding idiot, to me?’ Mama asked one morning as we sipped tea in her dressing room.
‘He still loves you, Mama. Why else would he stay?’
She ignored the implications of my question. ‘I remember when I would be naked, standing by the Voronka, ready to bathe,’ she said. ‘And he would surprise me, overtake me. He would roll me into a high patch of weeds, where he would ravish me.’ Her eyes rolled as she spoke. She appeared quite mad, like Othello just before he murdered Desdemona, his big, white eyes burning in a dark, twisted face.
I did not enjoy hearing this. This was not the sort of thing one said to a daughter.
I could not have made it through these tense days at Kochety without Varvara, who never allowed the atmosphere of deceit and madness to bother her. She is like a running brook beside my field, watering my roots. Without her, I would shrivel.
Papa questioned me about Varvara in a most peculiar fashion one day when I was about to take his dictation. He asked me if I thought I loved her.
‘Yes, I am fond of her,’ I said.
‘But do you love her?’
‘I love her.’
He seemed happy to hear this. I am sure he does not think our friendship is ungodly. He is not perverted, as Mama claims; indeed, he realizes that loving men is the same as loving women in all ways but the most technical.
Mama’s birthday occurred on the twenty-second of the month. She was sixty-six and looked every minute of it. Papa’s birthday came six days later, his eighty-second. It should have been a time of great celebrating, but Mama insisted on rehearsing the old, troublesome issues. One by one, they hammered through them, with Tanya acting as referee.
Papa – who had been battered for days – began this particular round of accusations. We were gathered around the big table at Kochety, when Papa suddenly took it upon himself to say that celibacy and chastity were the two main goals of the Christian life.
‘Listen to him!’ Mama shrieked. ‘Leo Nikolayevich, you are eighty-two years old today and still a fool.’
Tanya said, ‘This is no way to speak to each other on a happy day. Let’s rejoice as a family and love one another, as the Gospels tell us.’ She offered everyone a second helping of venison, while Sukhotin passed around a white wine from the Moselle.
But Mama would not be silenced.
‘A man who fathers thirteen children insults us when he proclaims the holiness of celibacy. Especially if that man has lain beside God knows how many women – or men. It is disgraceful, Leo Nikolayevich. You shame yourself when you talk like this.’
After dinner, I removed Papa from her company. He gripped my arm tightly as we made our way into the long evening shadows, taking a short walk in the park. It was lovely, with barn swallows skimming the trees. The moon pressed its bootheel into the sky’s dark sand while, in the distance, a flock of geese could be heard honking as they flew southward.