He could not sleep. He paced up and down in his room, with drooping beard and moistened, tragic eye. "What astonished me is that he has continually sought to arouse my sympathy for him," she wrote, "but has not made the slightest effort to put himself in my place or understand that I never had any intention of doing any harm to anyone, not even to thieving muzhiks. That self-worship of his comcs across on every page of his diary. It is amazing to see how people simply do not exist for him except in so far as they concern him directly."1
Until five in the morning he sighed, wept and inveighed against his wife, while she, exhausted, momentarily contemplated suicide: "Tell them all good-bye and go lie down peacefully on the railroad track." She was haunted by the memory of Anna Karenina. The author's wife, even in death. It relieved her to write this resolution in her notebook, and she dropped off to sleep. The next day the argument pursued its course in the rest of the family. The two older daughters thought their mother was wrong, but Tanya wrote in her diary, "I feel more sorry for Maman than for Papa . . . because she docs not believe in anything. . . . And then she loves Papa more than he loves her. She is as overjoyed as a child at the smallest word of kindness from him." Meanwhile, Tolstoy was writing, "It has become more than I can bear. My heart ached all day long. I should go away."2 The next day, "I think I
should info nil the government that I am giving up my property rights and let it do what it will."
During the ensuing weeks, this idea ripened in his mind. He decided that it was no longer enough to leave the management of his property to his wife. If he wanted to suit his action to his thoughts, he should refuse to own anything at all in his own name. The best thing would be to distribute all his land to the peasants. But Sonya and the older sons were opposed to this. After lengthy confabulation, they reached a compromise: Tolstoy would bequeath all his goods and chattels to Sonya and the children, who would divide them up among themselves. The evaluation of the property and the contents of each share gave rise to heated debate around the family table. The apostle of dispossession now sat and listened in dismay as the true nature of his wife and children became apparent: they were haggling over a few rubles or an acre of ground. "Now one is not satisfied with something and the other is afraid of heaven knows what," wrote Sonya. "It is most trying. As for Lyovochka, his only contribution to the discussion is indifference and sulkiness." Tanya observed that her father, aghast at the turn events had taken, looked like "a condemned man who cannot wait to put his head through the noose." Sometimes he could stand no more and fled, shutting himself up in his workshop to make boots. Then Sonya would sigh, "I would so like to see him in good health, but he is ruining his stomach, even the doctor says so, eating things that are no good for him. I would like to see him doing an artist's work, but all he writes is sermons. I would like to see him tender, sympathetic, friendly, but whenever he is not being grossly sensual, he is indifferent."
The decision to divide up the property was made at Easter, but the actual bequest to the living heirs was not signed until over a year later: July 7, 1892. The bargaining continued bitterly until the last moment. The entire estate was evaluated at 580,000 rubles.0 It was divided into ten shares, and a legal document was drawn up allocating the first to Sonya and the others to the nine surviving children. Nikolskoyc (the Tolstoy homestead) was divided among Sergey, Ilya, Tanya and Masha; Ilya also received Grinevka; Leo had the Moscow house and a part of the Samara farm; Tanya and Masha received Ovsyanikovo and 40,000 rubles in cash; Audrey, Michael and Sasha were each given 3400 acres of fallow land in Samara; and Yasnaya Polyana went to the mother and Vanichka, the last-born, "for the children cannot take this estate away from their father," Sonya wrote, "and wherever I am he will be too."
• Or $1,642,300.
Of the entire family, only the two eldest daughters wondered whether, out of loyalty to their father's ideas, they should not refuse any part of this wild scramble. Tanya, who was more sensitive to worldly attractions, ultimately yielded: "I still need so many things and am so useless that in the end I shall have to be supported by somebody else," she wrote, to excuse her adherence to the plan; but Masha the violent, the sectarian, came forth with a lofty refusal. Her father was moved to tears; her mother, brothers and sisters said she was only doing it to put them in a bad light. "Yesterday, a really amazing conversation among the children," noted Tolstoy on July 5, 1892. "Tanya and Leo were trying to prove to Masha that it was a low, evil trick on her part to give up her share of the estate. Her attitude forces them to face the fact that theirs is truly base, and since they must needs be right at all costs, they invent explanations to prove that what she is doing is wicked and vile. Disgusting! I can't write. I have already wept and I feel like crying some more. They say, 'We thought of doing it ourselves, but it wouldn't have been right.' My wife tells them, 'Leave it all to me!' That silences them. Horrible. I have never seen more obvious and more clearly motivated hypocrisy. Sorrow, sorrow, what weight, what torture!"
Masha held her ground against the whole pack of heirs, in spite of their concerted baying. Her farsightcd mother decided to keep back her share, however, and let the income from it accumulate, just in case her daughter should change her mind one day. "The poor girl," she said, "cannot see things clearly, or imagine what her life would be like if, after living as she has, she were suddenly to find herself penniless."
There remained the ticklish question of royalties. Tolstoy meant to give them up too, but Sonya opposed him once again. "She doesn't understand, and the children do not understand," he wrote, "that every time they spend a ruble from the sale of my books they arc causing me shame and suffering. The shame I could bear, but why lessen the impact that proclaiming such a truth as this might have? I suppose it must be so. The truth will prevail without my help."3
On the following day, July 15, Sonya surrendered, and consented to her husband authorizing anyone and everyone to publish his later works. But when, a week later (July 21), he announced that he had written a letter to the press explaining the implications of his decision, she flew into a rage. White with anger, she screamed that she needed that money to keep the family going and that by giving up his rights he was making a public scandal of his dispute with his wife and children, that it was just one more indignity inflictcd on those who bore his name; that, moreover, he was not acting out of real conviction but for the sake of his own fame and glory, that he would stoop to anything to attract attention to himself. The apostle winccd and retorted that his wife was "the most stupid and greedy creature" he had ever met and that she was perverting the children "with her rubles." Then, pointing to the door, he shouted, "Get out! Get out!" Sonya, racked by sobs, ran into the garden and hid in the apple orchard so that the caretaker should not see her in tears; she sat down, panting, on the edge of a ditch. There she penciled a few words in her notebook, explaining that death was the only solution to the discord between herself and Lyovochka. Decidedly, Anna Karenina's example was contagious. This time, for sure, she would throw herself under a train. She got up and ran, stumbling in her skirts, toward the Kozlovka station. Her head achcd painfully, "as though clamped in a vise."
In the twilight, she saw a man dressed in a peasant blouse coming toward her. She thought it was her husband and there would be a reconciliation. A surge of joy drove her onward. But she was mistaken: the man in the peasant blouse was her brother-in-law Kuzminsky. Seeing the state she was in, he questioned her, tried to calm her and pleaded with her to return to the house. She walked a little way with him, then left him to bathe in the Voronka, hoping to drown herself. But the dark, chilly water frightened her. She went back to the forest. Suddenly she thought she saw an animal charging at her. Dog? Fox? Wolf? She screamed. Nothing, nobody. The animal had vanished in the evening mist. She told herself that she had gone mad. Then, feeling better, she returned to the house and went to see Vanichka in his bed. She loved him so, her frail little boy whose grace and gentleness and intelligence consoled her for the brutality of the others. Sometimes she feared he was too perfect for this world. She wrote, "What an exquisite child! I am afraid he will not live."4 She smothered him with kisses. Outdoors, on the terrace, Tolstoy was chatting and laughing with his big sons and daughters and their guests. "He will never know how close I came to killing myself," she thought, "and if he docs find out, he won't believe it."«