The station was empty at that hour. As I sat by myself on the platform, I studied the silvery tracks that trailed off into infinity. It occurred to me that the life of the body and the life of the soul are like these tracks, running parallel into the visible future. We like to imagine a meeting point, a junction where the earthly body joins a heavenly one. But this is an illusion. The body rail, somewhere, at a definite point in time, stops. The spirit rail continues, perhaps to infinity. Who can say?
Kneeling at the bench, I prayed for the Tolstoy family and for my own soul. And I felt, deep inside me, that I was not alone.
When Leo Nikolayevich woke, an hour later, he took his own temperature. It was 104.3.
‘Not a good sign, Dushan,’ he said.
‘You’ll be all right,’ I said.
‘You needn’t lie to me, my friend,’ he said. ‘But I understand how you must feel. Remember that you are my doctor, not my angel. Whatever happens, it is not your fault.’
A fit of coughing took him by surprise, and he shook violently. I gave him a glass of water.
‘All will be well,’ he said. ‘You are quite right.’
I looked at the floor. It was foolish of me to address him like a child.
‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Checkmate.’
I looked up at him, and he was smiling.
38
Chertkov
I rejoiced when Leo Nikolayevich left Sofya Andreyevna. Everyone assumed that I was behind his departure, although this was untrue. Reporters from Moscow and Petersburg, from Paris and London, were in touch with me from the outset. But I told them, at first, the truth: I did not know where he had gone. I told them that Tolstoy wanted to escape. He did not want publicity.
But the cause needs publicity. In order to prevent Sofya Andreyevna’s side of the story from dominating the press, I prepared a statement on the reasons for Tolstoy’s flight. For moral consistency, he had no choice but to leave, it explained.
The telegram from Astapovo, which requested my presence, moved me terribly. I was breathless and strangely elated now. My work had not been in vain.
I left at once, arriving on Tuesday in the little railway station, having traveled through the night to his bedside. Sergeyenko accompanied me.
My heart leaped when I saw Leo Nikolayevich, the weary, shrunken, but still beautiful face, a blanket drawn up beneath his chin. He was feverish, flushed, and exhausted, but he greeted me with tears and embraces. ‘It is you!’ he kept repeating. ‘I can hardly believe you’re here, at last. Thank you, Vladimir. Thank you.’
The stationmaster asked if I was his son.
Leo Nikolayevich nodded eagerly. ‘He is my son,’ he said. ‘I have no other son who has understood.’
We drank a glass of tea and talked about his departure from home. The business of Sofya Andreyevna is all quite impossible. Being out of her mind, she would pounce on us as soon as she learned of her husband’s whereabouts. That much was certain.
‘I don’t know when she’ll come,’ Leo Nikolayevich said. ‘But she will come. I know it.’
‘She will not bother you,’ I said.
He seemed to relax when I said that, and I determined to keep her away from him. She will not make his death a miserable one.
As I feared, we did not have to wait long for the wretched woman. Sometime in the early afternoon Ozolin appeared and asked Sasha and me to step outside. Leo Nikolayevich was dozing, luckily.
‘A telegram has come from Tula,’ he said. ‘The Countess Tolstoy has hired a private train, a first-class train! She will arrive in Astapovo after dinner.’
At once I called everyone together in the waiting room of the station: Sasha, Varvara Mikhailovna, Dushan, Sergeyenko. All agreed that Sofya Andreyevna must not be allowed to see her husband. In his condition, it would kill him.
‘Mama would drag him back like a sack of beans, dead or alive,’ Sasha said.
‘We must form a protective circle around the stationmaster’s cottage,’ I said. ‘Sofya Andreyevna, and her dreadful offspring – I refer to the odious ones, Ilya and Andrey – must be prevented from invading his sickroom.’
We could be grateful for one thing, that young Leo was in Paris. He is a liar and a bully, and Lord knows how he would have tried to thwart my plans.
That evening, before dinner, Sergey arrived. But I felt strongly that he should not be admitted to his father’s bedside – not now.
‘I shall see my father,’ the boy insisted, standing boorishly in the doorway.
‘It’s all right,’ Sasha said. ‘He can go in.’
I saw no point in resisting. Consenting would give me leverage later on, when I might need it.
Leo Nikolayevich was, as I suspected, confused and upset by Sergey’s arrival.
‘How did you find me, Sergey?’ he asked, in a whisper of panic.
‘I was passing through Gorkachev,’ Sergey replied. ‘And I happened upon a conductor who knew where you were. It was sheer luck, Papa!’
Leo Nikolayevich seemed to realize that a game was afoot, and that he had to play his part.
To my surprise, he seemed eager to get news from Sergey about his wife and Yasnaya Polyana. I realized, sadly, that he still yearned for his past life.
After dinner, his fever shot up and he became delirious. Near ten, he fell asleep.
‘What do you think, Dushan?’ I asked in a low voice.
‘It is almost over,’ he said. ‘It would be dishonest to say otherwise.’
Sofya Andreyevna’s dark blue train arrived at midnight and was put on a sidetrack. She rode in a luxurious carriage with several servants, a nurse, and miscellaneous children and their spouses. It was a ludicrous spectacle, worthy of the countess in all respects.
Dushan Makovitsky went to greet her, saying that both he and Dr Nikitin agreed that nobody else could see her husband at present. His unwavering approach paid off: Sofya Andreyevna accepted his argument, agreeing to remain in the train until Leo Nikolayevich was stronger.
‘Sometimes,’ Sergeyenko whispered to me afterward, ‘a warm wind blows from the north.’
No other accommodations were available, so the private train became a makeshift hotel.
Dr Nikitin didn’t arrive until the next day, but Sofya Andreyevna didn’t know this. He examined Leo Nikolayevich and said that his heart was weak and that the left lung was indeed infected. Nonetheless, it was a good sign that the fever had dropped to 100.9 and was holding steady. Pneumonia was by no means the final diagnosis, he said, since he could hear rattling in Leo Nikolayevich’s chest. With pneumonia, the lung – or lungs – fill up with fluid. Instead of rattling, one hears an ominous silence.
Leo Nikolayevich was alert now and delighted by this report; he huddled in a cushioned chair with a blanket around his shoulders and his legs on a stool. He seemed eager to talk.
‘Let me explain to you my view of life, Dr Nikitin, so that you will understand why I left my wife, and why, even if I’m too old for such a thing, I feel I must continue this journey.’
We sat back, astonished, as he delivered a miniature lecture on his philosophy of life: concise and well articulated. I could not have done better.
‘It would be ill-considered of me to recommend anything but prolonged rest,’ Dr Nikitin said. ‘Your resistance is low.’
‘How long, then? A week?’
‘Two weeks – at least. A month would, in fact, be safer.’
‘Impossible! My wife would certainly find me in so much time. That must not happen.’ He turned to me. ‘Vladimir, you understand why this must not happen, don’t you?’
I assured him that I did, but I told him he must not worry. Hadn’t Sergey just explained that Sofya Andreyevna was reconciled to her new life?