As long as that is missing, life with you is unthinkable for me. To return to you while you are in such a state would mean to renounce life. And I do not consider that I have the right to do that.
Farewell, dear Sonya, and may God help you! Life is not a jest, and we have no right to throw it away on a whim. And to measure it by its length of time is also unreasonable. Perhaps those months that remain to us are more important than all the years we have yet lived, and they should be lived well.
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.