“No other writer was as prone to great contradictions,” explained the professor, whose mustache and mobile eyebrows gave him the air of a nineteenth-century philanderer. All summer long, Tolstoy played tennis for three hours every day. No opponent could rival Tolstoy’s indefatigable thirst for the game of tennis; his guests and children would take turns playing against him.
The International Tolstoy Scholars wondered at Tolstoy’s athleticism. He should have lived to see eighty-five—ninety—one hundred!
Tolstoy had also been in his sixties when he learned how to ride a bicycle. He took his first lesson exactly one month after the death of his and Sonya’s beloved youngest son. Both the bicycle and an introductory lesson were a gift from the Moscow Society of Velocipede-Lovers. One can only guess how Sonya felt, in her mourning, to see her husband teetering along the garden paths. “Tolstoy has learned to ride a bicycle,” Chertkov noted at that time. “Is this not inconsistent with Christian ideals?”
On the last day of talks, wearing my Tolstoyan costume and flip-flops, I took my place at the long table and read my paper about the double plot in Anna Karenina. It ended with a brief comparison of Tolstoy’s novel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which turned out to be somewhat controversial, since I was unable to prove that Tolstoy had read Alice by the time he wrote Anna Karenina.
“Well, Alice in Wonderland was published in 1865,” I said, trying to ignore a romance that was being enacted, just outside the window, by two of the descendants of Tolstoy’s horses. “It’s well known that Tolstoy liked to receive all the latest English books by mail.”
“Tolstoy had a copy of Alice in Wonderland in his personal library,” said one of the archivists.
“But it’s an 1893 edition,” objected the conference organizer. “It’s inscribed to his daughter Sasha, and Sasha wasn’t born until 1884.”
“So Tolstoy hadn’t read Alice in 1873!” an old man called from the back of the room.
“Well, you never know,” said the archivist. “He might have read it earlier, and then bought a new copy to give to Sasha.”
“And there might be mushrooms growing in my mouth—but then it wouldn’t be a mouth, but a whole garden!” retorted the old man.
One of the Rousseau experts raised her hand. “If Anna represents Alice, and Levin represents the White Rabbit,” she said, “then who is Vronsky?”
I tried to explain that I wasn’t suggesting a one-to-one correspondence between every character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Anna Karenina. The Rousseau expert stared at me. “Anyway,” I concluded, “it’s Oblonsky whom I was comparing to the White Rabbit—not Levin.”
She frowned. “So Vronsky is the White Rabbit?”
“Vronsky is the Mad Hatter!” someone shouted.
The conference organizer rose to her feet. “I think we can continue this interesting discussion over tea.”
In the crush at the tea table, I was approached by the archivist, who patted my shoulder. “I’m sure Tolstoy read Alice in Wonderland before 1873,” she said. “Also, we received a police report today. A certain suitcase has been received and is being held in security.”
She directed me to the security holding area, which was inside one of the historic white gate-towers of Yasnaya Polyana—one of the very towers depicted on the mug that I had used to solicit shampoo. The mug had been a clue. As the Keebler Elf factory is hidden inside a hollow tree, so was an entire security office concealed within a gatepost. Next to one of the officers’ steel desks, under a framed portrait of Tolstoy, sat my suitcase. It had arrived two days ago, but the officers hadn’t known whose it was. I signed a form and dragged my suitcase over moss and tree roots, back toward the conference hall. It was a good opportunity to look at the ground. I was looking for Hyoscyamus niger, a toxic plant known as henbane or stinking nightshade that is native to Eurasia.
Henbane contains the toxin atropine, which is associated with nearly all of Tolstoy’s symptoms, including fever, intense thirst, delirium, delusions, disorientation, rapid pulse, convulsions, difficulty breathing, combativeness, incoherence, inability to speak, memory loss, disturbances of vision, respiratory failure, and cardiopulmonary arrest. A particularly distinctive feature of atropine poisoning is that it dilates the pupils and causes sensitivity to light. I had no information about Tolstoy’s pupils, but Chertkov’s diary does contain one suggestive observation: “Tolstoy—to the amazement of his doctors—continued to show signs of consciousness to the very end . . . by turning away from the light that was shining into his eyes.”
Nearly anyone might have slipped henbane into Tolstoy’s tea (of which he drank large quantities). Chertkov, for example, in concert with Dr. Makovitsky. They, the fervent Tolstoyans, had motive enough: What if Tolstoy repented and changed his will again? What if, in his dotage, by some new weakness, he contradicted the principles of Tolstoyanism?
Sonya had, in addition to motive, a known interest in poisons. “I have consulted Florinsky’s book on medicine to see what the effects of opium poisoning would be,” wrote Sonya in her diary in 1910. “First excitement, then lethargy. No antidote.” Then there were the Tolstoys’ sons: though the daughters tended to side with Tolstoy, the sons, who were usually short on money, sided with their mother. In 1910, Sonya boasted that, even if Tolstoy had written a secret will, she and their sons would have it thrown out: “We shall prove that he had become feeble-minded toward the end and had a series of strokes . . . We will prove that he was forced into writing that will in a moment of mental incapacity.”
Perhaps Sonya had used atropine to simulate the effects of a stroke. She might not have intended to kill her husband—just to provide grounds to invalidate his will. But, in his atropine-induced delirium, Tolstoy had embarked on his bizarre and fatal flight.
After Tolstoy’s death, Sonya, supported by a pension from the tsar, tried to fight Sasha and Chertkov for the copyrights. History opposed her in the form of the Great War, followed by the 1917 revolution. Sonya and Sasha were finally reconciled during the famine of 1918–19. Of her mother at this time Sasha recalled: “She seemed strangely indifferent to money, luxury, things she liked so much before.” On her deathbed, Sonya made a strange confession: “ ‘I want to tell you,’ she said, breathing heavily and interrupted by spasms of coughing, ‘I know that I was the cause of your father’s death.’ ”
Of all the papers at the conference, the most mysterious was about Tolstoy’s little-read play The Living Corpse. This paper was delivered by a Czech septuagenarian with large, watery gray eyes, well liked both for his bombastic sociability and for his generosity with the bottle of single-malt scotch he carried in his suitcase. Everyone called him Vanya, though I believe that wasn’t his real name.
The hero of The Living Corpse is a man called Fyodor. Fyodor is married, but he keeps running off with the Gypsies. He is chastely in love with a Gypsy singer. Meanwhile, his wife, Liza, is chastely in love with his best friend, whose name is, oddly, Karenin. (Karenin’s mother’s name is actually Anna Karenina.) Although Karenin returns Liza’s love, the two are unable to act on their feelings unless Fyodor grants Liza a divorce. Fyodor, for his part, cannot file for divorce without besmirching the honor of the Gypsy singer. In despair, Fyodor resolves to kill himself and even writes a suicide note, but is persuaded by the Gypsy girl to adopt a different course: he simply leaves his own clothes on a riverbank, with the note in one pocket. Everyone believes he has drowned, including Liza and Karenin, who get married. But just at the point when a new life should begin for Fyodor as well—nothing happens. Somehow Fyodor doesn’t change his name. He and the Gypsy girl don’t get married. They quarrel and drift apart. Fyodor spends all his time in the tavern. “I am a corpse!” he shouts, slamming his glass on the table. Eventually, Fyodor’s identity comes to light, and Liza is arrested for bigamy. In despair, Fyodor shoots himself. The living corpse becomes just an ordinary corpse.