‘They know exactly the way to go,’ Papa said. ‘And they don’t have to think about it. How I envy them.’
We stopped by a little pond full of ducks to sit on a stone bench overlooking the water.
‘The pity is,’ I said, ‘that Mama loves you.’
‘What your mother feels for me is not love,’ he said. ‘It has the possessiveness of love, but it’s something closer to hatred. She wants to destroy me.’
This could not be so. Much as I dislike her, I do not think Mama wants to destroy her husband, whom she worships in her twisted way.
‘Perhaps not. But her love is being transformed into hatred, day by day.’ He paused to think. ‘You see, she was saved for many years from her own egotism by the children. The children absorbed her. But that’s over, and nothing can save her now.’
Mama refused to stay at Kochety any longer, since everyone (so she claimed) treated her ‘like a Xanthippe.’ She continued to view her life as a drama – a tragedy – with herself on center stage. ‘She doesn’t want a family,’ Varvara told me. ‘She wants a Greek chorus.’
At Papa’s insistence, Varvara and I agreed to take Mama back to Yasnaya Polyana. He refused to go himself, thank God. He was enjoying himself at Kochety, playing chess with Sukhotin, walking in the park, reading Rousseau every morning and Pascal at night. He dictated letters and revised proofs sent to him by Chertkov. A brief while apart from Mama would be good for him.
I assumed the separation would benefit Mama, too, but as soon as we got home she became highly agitated. The day after we arrived, she walked into Papa’s study in a wild state. Realizing that a number of new photographs by Chertkov and me had been hung on the wall, she dashed them to the floor. Having replaced these by pictures of her own, she sent for a priest, who arrived with his liturgical paraphernalia to exorcise Chertkov’s diabolical presence from the room.
We sat in the hall, listening in near disbelief. Then Mama poked her head out, her eyes black as dirt. ‘I don’t care what your father does, Sasha. He can make everything over to Chertkov, if that’s what he wants. It won’t matter, because I shall break the will. Your brothers will stand behind me, and so will the tsar!’ She throbbed like a chicken’s disembodied heart.
Varvara assured Mama that Chertkov had no such evil plans.
‘The man will stop at nothing,’ Mama replied. ‘He wants to destroy me!’ She decided to return to Kochety at once.
The next few days were dreadful. Back at Kochety, Mama refused to eat any solid food. She would sit at meals, sulking, while Papa hovered meekly, imploring her to nibble. ‘Just a piece of black bread, my love,’ he would say. It was so pathetic that Sukhotin, who is normally pacific, lost his temper. Livid, he rose, leaning on clenched fists at the head of the table. ‘For God’s sake, Sofya Andreyevna!’ he said. ‘Do you know what you’re doing? Your only claim in life is as Leo Tolstoy’s wife, don’t you know that? If he leaves you, history will say it was your fault. And, I swear to you, they will be right!’
Papa’s head sagged. He realized that the situation was unbearable and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder and sighed.
I saw tears on Mama’s cheeks now, a look of unbearable sorrow pooling in her face.
She left that day for home – a merciful gesture on her part – asking her husband to follow in a few days. She wanted them together at Yasnaya Polyana, however, for their forty-eighth wedding anniversary, on the twenty-third of September. He could hardly not agree.
On the morning of the anniversary, Mama came down from her bedroom dressed in a white silk dress, a childlike smile on her face, as if their marriage had been half a century of inexpressible bliss. I confess, she looked radiant. Varvara Mikhailovna and I both complimented her.
‘Tell your father to put on a clean shirt,’ she said. ‘I will ask Bulgakov to take our picture on the front lawn.’
With reluctance, Papa put on a white linen blouse and his best leather boots – ones that he had made himself a couple of years ago and reserves for what he calls ‘state occasions.’ He brushed his hair and beard carefully.
Husband and wife of nearly five decades had a cup of hot chocolate before going outside for the picture. It was a warm day for late September. Though it was not yet noon, the sun burned with an almost lurid brightness, and the heat stood, quivering, on the recently mowed fields – the last cut of the year. Bulgakov was assigned the role of photographer because he supposedly has a knack for it.
Mama thought that a grand, stately photograph of herself and Papa appearing in all the newspapers would put to rest what she called the ‘persistent rumor that there is marital strife between us.’ Papa could hardly refuse to be photographed beside her, since he lets Chertkov take his picture at the slightest whim. I doubt that any man in history has been more photographed than Leo Tolstoy.
I put a screen behind the anniversary couple, as Bulgakov directed. He was being ‘professional.’
‘The screen will concentrate the sun’s rays on the photographic subject,’ Bulgakov said. Varvara Mikhailovna and I giggled behind his back, while Dushan Makovitsky frowned.
Papa squinted into the sun, haggard and distracted.
‘Please try to smile, Leo Nikolayevich,’ Bulgakov said.
Papa forced a meager smile.
Bulgakov put his head under the camera’s black hood, holding the rubber pear to one side. ‘A little to the left, please… There! Now smile…’
Mama, of course, looked like heaven on a dish. She stealthily slipped her arm around her husband’s waist and cocked her head toward his shoulder. She wanted the world to see the Perfect Couple. But nothing would alter Papa’s mood.
The shutter clicked, but when Bulgakov attempted to develop the pictures, two featureless ghosts appeared on the strong-smelling paper. Varvara Mikhailovna said, ‘The camera knows what is really there.’
They tried again the next day, with better results. Afterward, I took Papa aside. ‘You should never have let her talk you into that photograph. It was dishonest.’
‘You are much like your mother,’ he said. ‘Full of anger.’
He should never have spoken to me like that. But I realized his situation made it impossible to behave rationally.
Before lunch, I went in to take his dictation. He was sitting on the couch and looked up like an old spaniel. ‘It’s not your shorthand I need, Sasha. It’s your love.’
Intense love, pity, and sadness rushed from my heels up my spine and broke in a full wave over my head. ‘I need you so, Papa,’ I said, falling to the floor. I wrapped my arms around his knees and wept.
‘What a dear girl,’ he said, stroking my hair. ‘So dear, I love you. So dear…’
The next day Papa put the photographs taken by me and Chertkov back on his study walls. That afternoon, Mama lost her mind.
Varvara and I had been invited to visit a friend for a few nights, and we left after breakfast. That same afternoon, Papa went off into the woods on Delire. When he returned, he discovered that Mama had gone into his study with a cap pistol and fired shots at Chertkov’s pictures before tearing them up – the servants recounted the whole sordid tale in scrupulous detail, as always. When Mama saw Papa in his study, she rushed at him with the same pistol and fired several times at his head before racing back to her room.
Varvara and I were immediately sent for by one of the servants. When we returned, Mama pretended that nothing had happened. ‘You silly girls, what brings you back so quickly? I suppose your hostess was dull.’
I lost my temper. ‘You’re crazy and you’ll kill us all.’
‘Is that what you think?’ She began to enumerate her sufferings, but it was too much for Varvara Mikhailovna to endure.