Without telling her husband, Sonya went to Tula to be al>ortcd by a midwife. But when the woman heard her caller's name she became frightened and refused the job. Then Sonya tried to abort herself by taking scalding baths and jumping off the top of a dresser with her feet held together.4 To 110 avail.
Meanwhile Tolstoy, busy with his own thoughts, daily noted in his diary all his grounds for dissatisfaction with his family life. "It distresses inc greatly, but I cannot approve of them. Their joys—success at school or social success, music, physical comfort, shopping—I consider them all bad for them, but I cannot say so out loud. I might, but nobody would pay any attention to me. What seems to count for them is not the meaning of my words but the fact that I have the deplorable habit of repeating them. In my moments of weakness—this is one now —I am amazed by their lack of pity. How can they fail to see not only that I am suffering, but that I have ceased to live at all for the last three years? I arn condemned to play the part of a grumbling old man and as far as they are concerned I can play no other; but if I joined them, I would be deserting the truth, and they would be the first to let me know I had defected!" (April 4.) "Poor creature [Sonya], how she hates me! My God, help me! I don't mind bearing a cross, so long as it demolishes me completely. But this emotional tug-of-war is awful, painful and sad." (May 3.) "I saw in a dream that my wife loved me. Everything immediately became light and sunny. The truth is nothing like that. It is poisoning my existence. It would be so good to die." (May 5.) "I am suffering atrociously. Her soul is obtuse and dead; that I could bear, if that were all; but she is insolent and self-assured. . . . I ought to be able to put up with her out of pity, at least, if not love." (May 20.) "I have the feeling that I am the only sane man in a madhouse run by a madman." (May 28.) "The dreadful thing about it is that the luxury ancl sin in which I live were created by me; I am corrupt myself and incapable of doing anything about it. 1 cannot break the habit of smoking, I cannot devise a way of treating my wife without offending her and I cannot allow her to go on without any restraint. ... I keep looking. I try. . . ." (May 29.) "Why, really, am I necessary to them? What is the use of all this brain-beating? However hard the life of a vagabond (and it is not so hard as all that!), it cannot be anything like the agony I endure." (June 4.)
He had cut down his cigarette ration and given up eating meat and white bread, and tried to steady his nerves by working in the fields with the muzhiks. But he need only enter the house to return to the "life of debasement" in the person of his sons, sprawled about in armchairs, his too well-dressed daughters, Sonya with her swollen stomach, her face drawn by her pregnancy and her eyes full of resentment. On the evening of June 17 he had a stupid quarrel with her in the garden over the sale of some horses, which he had carried out without consulting her. As her voice began to rise, he suddenly felt that his cup was running over, the camel's back was breaking, he had to get away. He ran to his bedroom, grabbed up a knapsack, threw some clothes and his toilet articles into it, slung it over his shoulder and came out shouting that he was going to Paris or America. His daughter 'l'anya watched him go down the drive toward the Tula road. Sitting in front of the house, Sonya, her labor pains beginning, clutched her stomach and sobbed hysterically. Her second son Ilya came running, helped her to her feet and half-carried her to her room.
Tolstoy strode along the road under the moonlight at a furious pace. He had thought of leaving his wife before, since she kept saying how tired she was, of taking some broad-hipped young peasant woman with a bosom made for nursing and setting off for parts unknown, joining some group of emigrants. Once, in a burst of honesty, he had even told Sonya of his plan. She had not believed him. Now he was going alone. Lack of preparation. Besides, he didn't know where he was going. Halfway to Tula his conscience began to nag. Did he have the right, morally, to leave his wife just when she was about to give him another child? In his wrath he had forgotten this detail. Reluctantly, he turned back. He became gloomier with every step that brought him closer to the entrance towers of the estate. "In the house," he wrote, "I saw two bearded muzhiks playing vint—my two young sons. Their sister Tanya said, 'Have you seen her? . . I answered, 'I don't even want to see her!' And I came into my study to sleep on the couch. But I am too weighed down with sorrow to sleep. It's too painful. Now I feel sorry for her. I cannot believe she is made entirely of stone."
At three in the morning, just as he was about to drift off, Sonya, distraught and haggard, dragged herself to his room: "Forgive me," she said. "The child is coming. Maybe I shall die! . . He did not say a word, but stared fixedly at her and helped her to her room. The pains were coming faster. The midwife—the one from Tula?—sent the count out of the room.
In the morning of June 18, 1884 Sonya gave birth to a daughter, Alexandra, called Sasha. While the exhausted mother lay in her bed, Tolstoy was writing: "This event, which should have filled the family with joy and happiness, resembled some pointless and painful ordeal. A wetnurse has been engaged. If there is someone directing the course of our lives, I feel like complaining to him. It's too hard and too cruel. . . . Cruel for her. I see her heading for her ruin, and dreadful moral suffering. ... I have stopped drinking wine, I drink tea and suck on a lump of sugar, I eat no meat, I am still smoking, but less." (June 18, 1884.)
For the first time he confessed—to his brother Sergey who had come over from Pirogovo to congratulate the mother—that he was unhappy in his marriage and did not know what to do to get out of this "dread fill predicament." He also confided his grievances, by letter, to his new "co-thinker" Chertkov. Now there was a wonderful disciple, understanding, dedicated, uncompromising! "He coincides uncannily with me!" he wrote.5 He had a nightmare, however, that was as disturbing as an evil omen: "I saw Chertkov in my dream. Suddenly he began leaping about, he was nothing but skin and bones, I realized that he had gone mad!"6 What a pity that Chertkov's soul and Sonya's body could not be joined together to form one person. Many times, simply looking at her, with her round neck and broad waist and red mouth, he was on the point of forgiving her everything, even the fact that she refused to nurse the baby. Then one remark led to another; his patience at an end, he stormed out, slamming the door; she ran after him, wheedling, begging his pardon. "She tries to win me with her body," he wrote. "I struggle to resist, but 1 know I cannot, the way things are now. And living with a woman who is a stranger to your soul is horrible!"
On July 7, another sccnc. Tolstoy, beside himself, wrote some ominous sentences in his diary: "Until the day I die she will be a stone around my neck and the necks of my children. I must learn not to drown with this stone around my neck."
Later, lying beside her in bed after the light was out, desire awoke in him again. A certain warmth, something in the odor of her skin and hair made him dizzy. He wanted to hurl himself upon her as he used to do, drown his sorrows in the pleasures of his senses. She refused him. It was hardly a month since the baby was born. It was too soon, she- told him. He was hurt by the tone in which she rebuffed him—cold, "willfully mean." She was simply provoking him, of course. He could not sleep all night. He wanted to run away again. He got up and packed his knapsack, woke up his wife and, trembling with desire, disgust and resentment, poured out everything he had on his mind: "I told her she was no longer a wife to me. A helpmeet for her husband? She ceased to be a help to me long ago, she is a hindrance! A mother to her children? She refuses. A nurse? She won't. The companion of my nights? She provokes me, she makes it into a game. It was very unpleasant, and I felt how weak and pointless it was. I was wrong not to go. I think it will happen, sooner or later."7