he stuck up his hand and growled, "Well, I don't want to die cither!" Then, to change the subject, he affably inquired of his guest:
"Why don't you smoke? You used to."
"Yes," Turgenev answered. "But two charming young ladies in Paris told me that they would not allow me to kiss them if I smcllcd of tobacco, and so I have stopped."
Acutely embarrassed, Tolstoy looked around at his family, but no one dared to smile.
After dinner the two men withdrew to Tolstoy's study where, in privacy, their conversation turned to more serious matters. Neither alluded to the quarrel that had divided them. But they talked at length of literature, poetry, philosophy. Once again Tolstoy was appalled by his guest's indifference to questions of morality and religion. Turgenev, then engaged in writing his delightful Prose Poems, placed art above all else. For him God, the salvation of the soul and life after death were meaningless concepts, since the human mind was incapable of penetrating the mystery of creation; the worship of beauty, on the other hand, could illuminate an entire life. To Tolstoy, this adoration of the aesthetic was the height of irresponsibility. Sitting across from him in an armchair he saw his ideal opponent—in the form of a well- groomed, roguish, garrulous old man. Everything he most loathed—the music of words, intellectual divertissements, artificial courtesy, Western culture—combined in a single man! What self-control it must have required for him to refrain from turning him out of the house! As a good Christian, he dedicated his patience to God.
It was a fine day, so they went outdoors, where the rest of the family were waiting for them. There was a seesaw near the house, formed by a plank laid across a chopping block. Tolstoy climbed on one end and proposed that Turgenev sit on the other and then, to amuse the children, the two writers began to bounce up and down in alternation. Did Tolstoy think of the literary symbolism of their game of teeter- totter? The author of Smoke counterweighing the author of War and Peace, the descent of one causing the rise of the other . . .
They stopped, out of breath, and Tolstoy urged his guest to come with him for a walk in the country. Turgenev, who was a keen hunter, could identify the birds by their song: "There's a flicker," he said. "A linnet! A starling!" But even he who knew nature so well, was amazed at Tolstoy's more profound understanding of animals. There was more than a familiarity between them—something like an organic intimacy. He stood by a bony, mangy old nag, stroking its back and whispering gently into its ear, while the horse listened with evident interest. 'ITien he translated the animal's feelings to those around him.
"I could have listened forever," Turgenev later said. "He had got inside the very soul of the poor beast and taken me with him. I could not refrain from remarking, 'I say, Leo Nikolayevich, beyond any doubt, you must have been a horse once yourself!' "n
In the evening everyone assembled in the drawing room and Turgcncv read aloud one of his stories, The Dog. His audience's response was lukewarm and their words of praise halfhearted, but the author did not seem to notice. As he said good-bye the following day, he thanked his hosts with genuine emotion, and said to Tolstoy, in front of Sonya who blushed with pleasure, "You did admirably well, old man, when you married your wife!"
He wrote to Tolstoy from his Spasskoye estate, "I cannot help saying once more how good and enjoyable it was for me to be at Yasnaya Polyana, and how happy 1 am to see that the misunderstanding between us has vanished without a trace, as though it had never existed. I felt very strongly that the years which have aged us were not lived in vain and that both of us have become better than we were sixteen years ago.* I need not add that I shall certainly stop by to see you again on my way back."
On September 2, 1878 Turgenev returned to Yasnaya Polyana for three days, accepted his host's forced cordiality at face value, and sent an enthusiastic letter to Fet:
"It was a great joy for me to renew relations with Tolstoy. . . . His whole family is most likable and his wife charming. He himself has calmed down considerably and matured. We Russians know he has no rival."
Tolstoy, more perceptive, measured the full width of the gulf between them and foresaw that their views of life could only drive them apart as they grew older. The day after Turgencv's departure, he also wrote to Fet, their mutual friend:
"Turgcncv is the same as ever, and we have no illusions as to the degree of intimacy that is possible between us."
And to Strakhov:
"Turgenev has come back among us, amiable and brilliant as ever. But, between you and me, he is a little like a fountain of water that has been piped in: one is continually afraid it will run dry and there will be nothing left."
Unaware of this harsh judgment, Turgenev generously devoted his energies to serving his compatriot in France. On October 1, 1878 he wrote from Bougival to announce the success of the English transla-
0 In fact, it was seventeen years since Tolstoy and Turgcncv had seen each other.
tion of The Cossacks and the publication of the same work, in French, in the Journal de St. Petersbourg, in an adaptation by Baroness Meng- den. lie was rather annoyed by this, moreover, as he had wanted to translate The Cossacks himself, with the help of Mme. Viardot. "I don't know whether you have already made arrangements to publish it in book form in Paris," he wrote to Tolstoy, "but I should be very happy to assist the French public to appreciate the best story ever written in our language"!
I lis letter camc just as Tolstoy was going through a crisis of literary humility, which paradoxically took the form of exacerbated sensitivity about everything. Instead of thanking Turgcncv for his generosity, he flared up and replied:
"Skyler has sent me his English translation of The Cossacks. I think it is very good. Baroness Mengden's French translation (you met the lady at our home) is certainly bad. Please don't think I am putting on airs, but sincerely, it gives me an extremely disagreeable and confuscd feeling—the main ingredients of which arc shame and the fear of being made fun of—to reread what I have written, and even to skim it or hear it talked about. ... In spite of all my affection for you and my assurance that you wish me well, I feel as though you, too, are making fun of me. Therefore please let us not talk any more about my writing. You know every man has his own way of blowing his nose, and believe me, I blow mine exactly as I sec fit."
After this outburst, a resurgence of Christian charity prompted him to add, "I continue to admire your activc old age. During the sixteen years since we last saw each other, you have done nothing but improve in ever)' respect, even physically."14 Justifiably surprised, Turgcncv wrote back immediately: "Though you ask me not to speak of your writing, I cannot help pointing out that I have never, in the slightest degree, made fun of you. I have liked some of your books immensely, disliked others intensely and derived keen pleasure and genuine astonishment from still others, such as The Cossacks. But why should I have laughed at them? I thought you had long since gotten rid of such 'centripetal' feelings. Why do they affect only authors, and not painters, musicians and other artists? Probably because a larger share of that region of the soul which it can be embarrassing to expose goes into a literary work. No doubt; but at the stage we have reached in a writer's career, we should no longer be bothered by this."15