Sofya Andreyevna, for once, had an audience commensurate with her ego. She preened before the camera and supplied an endless stream of printable lies. She told them I was keeping her from her dying husband, so everyone assumed I must be a devil of the first rank. I should have expected this, but it was shameful of her all the same.
In any case, we succeeded, day by day, in preventing her from disturbing the tranquillity of Leo Nikolayevich, who at least pretended to believe he was alone in the country, surrounded by a circle of friends who sympathized with his view of life. He appeared happy, even serene, whenever the fever dropped and he could speak.
On Thursday morning, he said to Sasha, ‘I think I will die soon, but perhaps not. How can one know?’
‘Try not to think, Papa,’ she told him.
Her remark pricked him in the wrong place. ‘How is it possible not to think?’ he said. ‘I must think!’
Much of the time when he was conscious, I sat beside him and read passages from For Every Day, focusing on important chapters of the Gospels, the Upanishads, and the Analects of Confucius. Leo Nikolayevich often asked for something from Rousseau, too, though I tried to dissuade him from this old habit. He also insisted on Montaigne, another atheist. I could not understand this wish, either, but I acquiesced.
That night, Leo Nikolayevich suffered a number of small convulsions. He shook from head to toe, briefly; all the while his right hand held an imaginary pencil and scribbled on nonexistent paper.
Varvara Mikhailovna came noisily into the room, and Leo Nikolayevich startled. ‘Masha! Masha!’ he cried, then sank back into a stupor. He has never recovered from the death of his beloved daughter Masha. It hurt Sasha’s feelings that he would cry Masha’s name with such ferocity and obvious pain of loss.
On Friday, his condition worsened. The eminent Dr Berkenheim, a specialist in lung cases, arrived from Moscow, and he did not conceal his opinion.
‘It is the end, I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘It can’t be!’ Sasha said. ‘You’re quite wrong about this. His fever is down.’
But the fever was not down. It had been 103.6 for two days. The pulse became unbelievably rapid in the afternoon, so that we thought his heart might burst. Dushan Makovitsky was frantic, since he considered himself personally responsible for his patient’s pulse rate.
Dr Berkenheim had brought with him an arsenal of modern medicine: oxygen balloons, digitalin. But Leo Nikolayevich, distrusting modern medicine and its gadgetry, refused treatment.
His condition fluctuated hour by hour. He was perfectly coherent during dinner, ordering us about, discussing The Intermediary. By eight o’clock, he was delirious, calling to his long dead Aunt Toinette.
Tanya reappeared, and he said to her, ‘So much has fallen upon Sonya, my dear Sonya. She can’t stand this. It will kill her.’
‘Do you want to see her?’ Tanya asked. ‘Shall I call her?’
Everyone stiffened. What had got into her head?
Fortunately, her father said nothing. He looked at us, confused, and slumped into his pillow. His mouth sank into his toothless gums like a yeasty loaf of bread collapsing into itself.
Two more doctors arrived from Moscow, Dr Usov and Dr Shurovsky. Andrey and Ilya had summoned them. Incompetent hacks, they huddled in one corner and discussed the situation in pseudoscientific gibberish with Makovitsky, who looked painfully confused.
When Leo Nikolayevich saw them, he whispered to Tanya, ‘So this is it. The end. And it’s nothing.’
We stood about, stock-still. I was reminded of the time he almost died at Gaspra, nine years ago. Leo Nikolayevich had gone there to recuperate in the warm Crimean sun. He got worse at one point, and when it looked as though he might die, Sergey asked if he wanted to see the local priest, who had been begging for a final word with ‘the Count.’ Leo Nikolayevich replied, ‘Can’t they understand that even on one’s deathbed, two plus two is still four!’
Now Sasha hovered beside him, adjusting his pillow, smoothing the starched linen sheets, giving the blanket a tuck or tug.
‘My darling,’ he said. ‘You waste too much effort on an old man whose life is gone. There are many people in the world in need of your attention.’
‘Shush, Papa,’ she said.
Sofya Andreyevna, Andrey, and Ilya stood outside the cottage, a circle of hate, demanding entrance, but Dushan Makovitsky held them off like a brave lieutenant. He said that Leo Nikolayevich is much better today, that his temperature had dropped. Somehow, he managed to persuade them to return to their train.
Leo Nikolayevich grew delirious toward evening, and the Muscovite doctors insisted on giving him camphor injections, which made his body writhe, briefly, and relax. They put an oxygen balloon – a hideous modern contraption, a torture chamber – over his face. I had to turn my head.
We had trouble, too, with the Church. Leo Nikolayevich symbolized a challenge to their bankrupt dogmas. The Church has mesmerized the people, urging them to follow the tsar’s armies into an endless succession of futile battles. It was obviously in their interest to report that Leo Tolstoy, on his deathbed, had recanted and died in the arms of Mother Church.
A telegram came from the Metropolitan of St Petersburg, begging Leo Nikolayevich to repent. Soon a tedious monk called Father Varsonofy arrived on our doorstep. A comose little creature, his black beard flecked through with white, he reeked of garlic and wine. At first, he pretended to feelings of great sympathy for Tolstoyan ideas, then he tried to wheedle us into letting him see Leo Nikolayevich. ‘I only wish to see him!’ he cried. We told him this was impossible, so he approached Sofya Andreyevna, as if that would improve his chances of an interview! Then Ozolin told me that the bishop of Tula himself had been dispatched to Astapovo by the archbishop of Moscow. Such nonsense.
Sasha handed me a note the monk had written to her. It is a remarkable piece of deception, penned in an ornate hand:
You should be aware that the count told his sister, your aunt, that he wished to speak with a representative of the Church for the sake of his soul’s everlasting peace. He deeply regretted that this wish could not be granted while he was at Shamardino. I beg you, dear lady, with all respect, to inform him of my presence in Astapovo. I will be happy to see him, if for only a few minutes. Should he not want me to hear his confession, I shall return immediately to Optina and let God’s will be done.
I dropped his note into the fire, where it spread its wings slowly before it burst into orange flames.
I recalled a passage from Leo Nikolayevich’s diary of 1901, written in Gaspra during his illness: ‘When I seem on the edge of death, I want to be asked if I still see life as a continuous progression toward God, an increase of love. If I have no strength to speak, and the answer is yes, I shall close my eyes; if the answer, alas, is no, I shall look up.’ It occurred to me that I should ask him that question now, but it did not seem worth the risk.
My dear Leo Nikolayevich seemed close to whatever lay behind the papery veil that separates us from Eternity.
On Saturday evening, his lips turned stony. Blue spots emerged on his cheeks, on his ears and hands. He began to choke, calling in a raspy voice to his doctors, ‘I can’t breathe!’
They gave him further injections of camphor oil, though he continued to object.
‘Foolishness… foolishness!’ he shouted in a hoarse whisper. ‘Stop the injections…. Let me be, for God’s sake!’
Nevertheless, the injections helped. Again, he seemed much calmer almost immediately and sat up in bed. He called for Sergey.
‘My son,’ he said, as Sergey knelt beside him, his ear close to his father’s lips. ‘The truth… it matters so much to me… the way–’ His voice broke, exhausted by the effort, once again, to formulate the truth, to command the whip of language.