The day after this solemn interrogation of his conscience, one month after Vanichka's death, Leo Tolstoy, aged sixty-seven, took his first bicycle lesson. His brand-new machine was a present from the Moscow Society of Velocipede-Lovers. An instructor came to teach him, free of charge, how to keep his balance. What could Sonya be thinking, on March 28, 1895, as she watched her husband pedaling awkwardly along the snow-edged garden paths? She was probably shocked to see him enjoying a new sport so soon after their bereavement. Was it callousness, selfishness or the reaction of a prodigiously vital organism against the creeping fear of doom? She envied and hated him for being so strong. That evening, Tolstoy's entry in his diary consisted of the three ritual initials—"i.I.l." (if I live)—and nothing else.
4. Sonya s Folly; What Is Art?
'ITie summer after Vanichka's death, Tolstoy went back to work in the fields, rode horseback, played tennis and pedaled his bicycle. His skill at the latter provoked the admiration of his children and the shocked disapproval of his disciples. The prudish Chertkov soberly noted, "Tolstoy has learned to ride a bicycle. Is this not inconsistent with his Christian ideals?" Tolstoy, however, convinced himself of the utility of his project by reading the Scientific Notes on the Action of the Velocipede as Physical Exercise, by L. K. Popov. He also noted in his diary, "I don't know why I like it [riding a bicycle]. N. [Chertkov] is offended and finds fault with me for this, but I keep doing it and am not ashamed. On the contrary, I feel that I am entitled to my share of natural light-heartedness, that the opinion of others has no importance, and that there is nothing wrong in enjoying oneself simply, like a boy." However, he refrained from showing off his new accomplishment in the presence of distinguished visitors, of whom there were a bumper crop that year—scholars, journalists, sycophants, busy-bodies . . . and a thirty-five-year-old Russian author, whose name was beginning to be known: Anton Chekhov.
In those days Chekhov admired Tolstoy as a writer but did not accept his philosophy. He came of a modest family and had muzhik blood," and he thought the "old wizard" of Yasnaya Polyana was wrong to want those at the top to bring themselves down to the level of the people in order to drink the sacred truth at its source; on the contrary, he thought it was the level of the people that should be raised, through education. "The devil take all the philosophies of all the great men," he wrote. "Every great sage is as despotic as a general and
• Ilis grandfather, Egor Chekh, had been a serf on an estate belonging to none other than the father of Tolstoy's disciple Vladimir Grigorycvich Chertkov.
as devoid of consideration, because lie knows he is safe. Diogenes spat in people's faces, knowing that no one could touch him; and Tolstoy says all doctors are scoundrels and shows no respect for major issues because he too, like Diogenes, cannot be hauled into a police station or attacked in the newspapers."1 Elsewhere: "I was subjugated by the Tolstoyan philosophy ... for some seventeen years. But now something in me has protested; reason and a sense of justice have convinced me that there is more love in electricity and steam than there is in chastity and the refusal to eat meat."2
When he first came to Yasnaya Polyana, one bright August morning, he encountered an old peasant in a white linen blouse walking along the birch drive with a towel over his shoulder. It was Tolstoy, on his way to bathe in the stream. When the caller stated his name, the master's face lighted up. He put his young colleague at his ease with a few friendly words and invited him to come along to the bathhouse, where he undressed and plunged into the water up to his neck. The ripples hid the nakedness of his body, and his beard floated on the surface while he chatted away. Chekhov was entranced by such unaffected simplicity.
Tlie next day Tolstoy arranged a reading of passages from Resurrection for Chekhov and a few friends. Chekhov found the book moving and fascinating, but could not admire it unreservedly, as lie had Tolstoy's other books. Every time the characters stopped living their own lives and became the protagonists of Tolstoyan theories, he was disturbed by their double personalities. After he left, Tolstoy, very favorably impressed, defined him as follows: "He is full of talent, he undoubtedly has a very good heart, but thus far he does not seem to have any very definite attitude toward life."3 Chekhov said, in return, "Talking with Leo Nikolayevich, one feels utterly in his power. I have never met a more compelling personality or one more harmoniously developed, so to say. He is almost a perfect man."4 But he still could not forgive him his ideas about religion, progress and non-resistance to evil.
That summer Tolstoy had the great joy of seeing his most cherished disciple, Chertkov, move with his wife into a little house less than three miles from Yasnaya Polyana. Thus they were able to meet every day. Chertkov urged Tolstoy to keep working on Resurrection, applauded him when he dashed off a virulent article against corporal punishment, t poked his nose into his diary and, when he caught the master straying from the "doctrine," called him to order with respectful stern-
t Entitled Shamel
ness. Sonya, still sore and bruised in her mourning, did not even have the energy to protest this appropriation of her husband by the "outsider." "She is exhausted," wrote Tolstoy, "she is mentally ill, it would be a sin to hold it against her. What a pity she will never admit her mistakes!"5 And he gave the following analysis of the suffering woman's condition to his son Leo: "She offers a striking example of the grave danger of placing one's life in any service but that of God. She is no longer alive. She is making herself miserable but cannot lift herself up into the sphere of the divine, that is, the spiritual. She would like to return to her former interests in life and her other children, but she cannot because her relationship with Vanichka, who was so young and so gifted, had elevated her, softened and purified her. . . . How easy it would have been for her, however, especially since she loves mel The trouble is that she loves me as I have not been for many years now and does not recognize me as I really am; I am a stranger to her, frightening and dangerous."8
One summer day his disciple Alyokhin, who was cutting hay at his side, advised him to leave his wife. He shrugged, but when the other man insisted, he flew into a rage and made a threatening gesture with his scythe. The next moment he threw the instrument away and fell sobbing to the ground. The witnesses of this scene, all confirmed Tol- stoyans, looked at cach other in dismay.7
In September, he had difficulty concealing his pleasure when he learned that Tsar Nicholas II, reversing his father's decision, had at last authorized the performance of The Power of Darkness in the imperial theaters. He was immediately caught up in a whirl of activity —casting, set-building, discussing the director's reflections on the meaning of the play. Returning to Moscow, he read it to the Art Theater company and sat in on rehearsals, but did not appear on opening night. The play was a triumph. The public rose to acclaim the missing author. Students rushed out to look for him, gathered in front of his house, demanded to see him, deafened him with their ovation.