On the terrace at Gaspra, looking out to the blazing sea, the two men had long talks together. Chekhov, dressed like a schoolmaster, with a mournful little beard, dangling eyeglass and hollow chest, struggled with his soft voice to contradict his host, as he drummed with his fingertips on the felt hat he had parked on his knees. Tolstoy sat beside him behind a cup of cold tea, looking shrunken in his peasant blouse, with a broad panama hat pulled down over his forehead, his legs encased in boots and his beard white and fluviatile, hardly listening to what the other man was saying; he talked on and on, condemning this and approving that, passing judgments without appeal. He liked Chekhov—"an atheist's head, but a heart of gold," he said; he was pleased by his "modest, gentle young lady's manner"; and he thought him very talented. He even said: "His language is extraordinary. I remember that it seemed most peculiar and 'awkward' to me the first time I read him, but when I began to pay closer attention, I was utterly captivated by it. . . . With no false modesty, I maintain that Chekhov is technically far superior to me."17 Chekhov was dead, it is true, when Tolstoy gave him this satisfecit; at Gaspra, the master took a harder line toward
his junior's work. Yes, of course, his stories and tales were admirable, although he greatly deplored the absence of any mystical principle motivating them; but he could not stomach his plays, which the Russian public devoured so eagerly. "He has so much talent," he said, "but in the name of what does he write? It is not so much that he has no overall view of the world, but that he has a wrong one, base, materialistic, self-satisfied."18 The Sea Gull was nothing but rubbish, he had not been able to force himself to read The Three Sitters, he was revolted by Uncle Vanya. One evening, he put his arm around Chekhov's shoulders and said, with brutal frankness: "Shakespeare's plays are bad enough, but yours arc even worse!"18 And on another occasion, somewhat more gently: "My dear friend, I beg of you, do stop writing plays!"20 Chekhov bowed his head, smiled and choked back a dry little cough, but kept his temper. Then Tolstoy expounded his own idea of the theater:
"In my opinion, modern writers have lost the sense of what a play- should be. A drama is not meant to tell us a man's whole life, but to place him in a situation and tie up his destiny in such a way that his entire being will be clcar from the manner in which he unties the knot! Yes, I have criticized Shakespeare. But at least, in his plays, every character acts, and it is clear why he acts as he docs. . . ."
Chekhov went on listening, motionless and courteous, to this demolition of his entire dramatic production, which was compounded of mystery and half-intentions, acting on the spectator by some undefina- ble charm, inconclusive, devoid of any moral, utterly lacking in "utility." "It is my impression," wrote Sergey Tolstoy, "that my father would have liked to be more intimate with him, to draw him into his circle of influence, but he felt an unspoken refusal, an uncrossablc frontier, that prevented complete understanding." And in the end Tolstoy, disappointed, grumbled: "Chekhov is not a religious man!"
No more so was Maxim Gorky. But at least he had the makings of a "genuine man of the people." He was tall and ungainly, with a round head, hair swept back, a drooping mustache and turned-up nose, Mongol cheekbones and blue, luminous, childlike eyes. The first thing that struck one about him was an air of unsophisticated goodness. The government had exiled him for his Marxist affiliations, and he lived a little over a mile from Gaspra. A friend of the "barefoot ragamuffins," he had plied every trade—errand boy, baker's helper, dishwasher, gatekeeper, barman—educated himself by reading everything he could lay- hands on, and astonished the public with the earnestness and drive of
his first stories. Tolstoy appreciated his storytelling powers and conceded that he did not lack substance, but found his characters "contrived," "manufactured," their psychology artificial and the style weak in places. "There is much that is juvenile, unripe in your thinking," he said, "but you know life." Although he liked this authentic plebian, he could not prevent himself from treating him with condescension and the curiosity of someone from another world. "Suddenly," Gorky wrote, "the old Russian lord, the arrogant aristocrat would spring up behind the stage costume of muzhik l)card and rumpled blouse, and then the friends and partners in conversation would feel a chill down their spines and turn pale." Neither of them was at ease in this confrontation of the official representatives of two classes of society. The nobleman who aspired to be a peasant feared the mocking eye of his visitor, who had known true poverty; and at every word the visitor felt the intellectual superiority of his muzhik-clad host. They chatted away, however, about literature, music, God, politics and women. On the latter subject, Tolstoy always expressed himself, in Gorky's words, "with the crude- ness of a Russian muzhik." One day, out of the blue, he asked Chekhov:
"Were you very profligate in your youth?"
Chekhov, embarrassed, did not answer. The author of Resurrection glared out to the far-off sea and added:
"I was insatiable!"
He gave details. Coarse words tumbled out of his mouth. Gorky, who was present, was shocked at first, but then realized that "by calling a spade a spade" Tolstoy was simply striving to be accurate. His vulgarity was merely the result of his aversion to prettifying. In his speech as in his books, he wanted above all else not to lie.
A short time later he told Gorky:
"Man can endure earthquake, epidemic, dreadful disease, every form of spiritual torment; but the most dreadful tragedy that can befall him is and will remain the tragedy of the bedroom."
And to prove that he was qualified to speak, he gave his young colleague his own diary to read. Rare mark of confidence to a stranger! Or senile self-indulgence, in showing off his scars to the whole wide world. Everything about himself, so he imagined, was fascinating, instructive, essential. By opening his heart, he encouraged others to do as much. But Gorky remained on the defensive, more inclined to observe than to put himself on display. "His interest in me is ethnographical," lie wrote. "In his eyes I am a specimen of a little-known tribe and nothing more." In the end, this reserve tried Tolstoy's patience and, after a low-pitched altercation, Tolstoy suddenly cried out, drilling him with his eyes:
"I am more a muzhik than you are and my feelings are more like a muzhik's than yours!"
Copying this sentence into his notebook, Gorky added, "Oh, God! He must not brag of that, no, he must not!"
Alternately irritated and dazzled by the incorrigible old man, he went to see him day after day, followed him on his walks through the countryside or along the seashore, listened, contradicted, and returned home bewitched, a mountain of images whirling in his head. Here is Tolstoy, bristling his heavy eyebrows, screwing up his eyes and sighing, as he stares out to the open sea, "Ah, how well I feel! If only I could suffer a little!" Or jogging along under a gray mist, leaping ditches, shaking the drops of water from his beard, sniffing the earth and moss, tossing out moral aphorisms and literary pronunciamentos in all directions: "The body must be the obedient she-dog of the soul. Wherever the soul goes, there the body must follow." "Chekhov would write even better if he weren't a doctor." "The French have three waiters: Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, and then Maupassant, but Chekhov is better than him." "With no false modesty, War and Peace is like The Iliad."