"So these gentlemen refuse to understand that even in the face of death two and two still make four!"
The metropolitan, Anthony, also wrote to Sonya privately, exhorting her to reconcile her husband to the Orthodox Church. She mentioned this offer of succor to Lyovochka, who said:
"There can be no question of a reconciliation. I die without resentment or hatred. But what is the Church? What reconciliation can there be with an indefinite object?"23
On his advice, she did not answer the metropolitan. The infection was spreading, both lungs were affected. He was given injections of morphine. He could hardly breathe, his pulse grew weaker. One night the doctors told the children that they had abandoned hope. Sonya, exhausted by her long nights of vigil, could not take her eyes off the face from which life was retreating with every breath. She wrote in her diary, 'The situation is almost (one might as well say totally) hopeless. Sleepless night. Pain in the liver. Anguish. Sudden burst of energy, the effect of valerian and champagne. . . . Dear Lyovochka, the only time he dozed off at all was when I lightly massaged his stomach and the area around his liver. He thanked me and said, 'Darling, you must be worn out.' "23
That night no one in the house got any sleep. Three doctors were installed in the dining room and tiptoed to look at the sick man from time to time. At dawn loud moans were heard, but they came from another room: Olga, Andrey Tolstoy's wife, was pregnant and had been fearing a miscarriage after a recent fall. The first pains came, just when her father-in-law was at his worst. At seven in the morning a child was born, dead. As one of the doctors carried the tiny corpse away, the old man was still clinging to life, and, as though this sacrifice of young flesh had appeased the angry gods, Tolstoy's agony abated. He mumbled, 'There, everything is in order. You will give me a shot of camphor and I shall die." Then he dozed off. The crisis was over. The next day, the infection began to retreat. He said to Dr. Volkov: "Well. I see I must go on living!" "Do you mind?" Sonya asked.
"What do you mean? Not at all! It's fine with me!" he retorted gaily.
"An excellent thing, a long illness! It allows one to prepare for death. . . . I am ready for anything: life or death. . .
Soon he was able to go out onto the balcony and breathe the sea air. To Sonya's surprise and irritation, after begging for death, he became much engrossed with the state of his health: "From morning to night," she noted, "every hour on the hour, he is worrying and nursing his body. . . . He used to speak of death, prayer, his relations with God ancl eternal life. Now I observe with horror that he has lost every trace of religious feeling. With me he is demanding and unpleasant."24 She felt utterly alone, abandoned and slightly ridiculous now that her nurse's work was over. If at least he were still able to desire her! But now he was too weary and old for her to hope that spark would ever rekindle in him again. A few months before, she had noted 111 her diary, "With Leo Nikolayevich things have happened exactly as I predicted. When his old age compelled him to give up sexual relations with his wife (which happened just a little while ago!), I did not see rising up to replace them the thing I had always so ardently desired: a tranquil and tender friendship. Instead, there was a total void."25
Unconcerned by Sonya's anguish, Tolstoy was gratefully digging his way back into life. He was full of plans: articles on the religious question, a message to the young, a commentary on Henry George's theories of agricultural reform. . . . Once again he became completely engrossed in the events of the world he had been so close to leaving. He was stunned by a student's assassination of Sipvagin, the minister of the interior who had quelled an uprising with such a heavy hand the previ ous year. He wrote to Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich: "This is an awful thing, because of the anger, hatred and thirst for vengeance it will stir up, but it had to happen, and it is a precursor of still more dreadful things to come, as long as the government does not changc its policy."26 On the other hand, when Chekhov asked him to join in protest against the tsar's decision to veto Gorky's election to the Academy he growled: "I don't consider myself a member of academics!" and plunged back into the book he was reading.
When he seemed definitely out of danger, the family dispersed. Even Sonya left Lyovochka to the charms of his convalescence and took the train to Moscow to settle a few publishing matters and, so Sasha claimed, make the rounds of the concerts. Upon her return, on May 1, 1902, she thought she was being punished for her sins: Lyovochka had a relapse—typhoid fever. Once more into the breach. A fresh batch of telegrams was fired off in all directions, the family returned to mass itself around the patriarch, the doctors reappeared, devoted and anxious, and Sonya remorsefully immersed herself once again in the atmosphere
of vigils, medicine and presentiments. r11ie eldest son, Sergey, was more help than the others. Tall and strong, he guessed the sick man's every wish in advance and could pick him up in his arms like an infant. Ilya too was full of consideration. Only Leo, the intellectual, was a disappointment to his father: once again he had taken it into his head to publish a book on the evils of Tolstoyism. What annoyed the old man was not so much that the upstart puppy should combat his ideas, but that he should do so with so little talent, and bear the name of Tolstoy! Ilis daughters, on the other hand, gave him every satisfaction. Sasha, Masha and Tanya bent over him with angelic faces. It grieved them to see him failing. And in fact, he was feeling better. Was it possible? It was; for the third time in ten months, he was wriggling off the hook. Perhaps he really was immortal! His appetite returned, he sat up in an armchair, went into the garden, leaning on a cane, delighted in the almond trees and magnolias in bloom and the sun sparkling on the sea. But how he had aged! "Poor dear!" wrote Sonya. "I find it hard to look at this world celebrity, who is a skinny, pitiful little old man in his private life."27
At last, on June 25, 1902, the Tolstoys left Gaspra for Yasnaya Polyana. They were to travel from Yalta to Sevastopol by boat and from there by rail. A crowd of onlookers was milling about in the port. Kuprin, the novelist, had managed to slip on board the ship, and saw a man climb out of a carriage wearing an overcoat that was too short for him, a bowler and boots. On the deck, someone introduced him to the master. "I recall that I was staggered," said Kuprin. "Instead of a gigantic, venerable patriarch looking like Michelangelo's Moses, I saw an old man, rather short, whose movements were precise and careful." As Tolstoy moved toward the section of the ship in which the poor people were herded together, a passage opened up before him. "He moved on as a king, who knows nothing can stand in his way." Later, he was surrounded by friends wishing him a good crossing. "Then," continued Kuprin, "I saw a different Tolstoy, a Tolstoy who was almost a coquette. In a moment, he was thirty years old: firm voice, keen eyes, elegant manners . . ."
A Pullman was waiting for the prophet at Sevastopol. Flowers, ovations, women wailing and fainting, he was used to them now.
Back in his birthplace once more, he saw that the beauties of the Crimea, great as they were, could not do him one-tenth as much good as the scenery, silence, climate and peasants of his own home. The doctors unanimously advised him to live in the country all year round; to his great joy, the project of winter trips to Moscow was abandoned. At Yasnaya Polyana, he moved out of his damp, vaulted rooms on the ground floor into two sunny rooms upstairs. He no longer shared a
room with his wife, but slept in a sort of monastic cubicle, furnished with a bed, a stool and a washstand. Mis study was next to it, giving on to the balcony.
Sonya had been so anxious during her dear Lyovochka's illness that she now lived in continual fear of a relapse. Twenty times a day she felt his pulse, inquired into the condition of his stomach or throat, entreated him to keep well covered. Still opposed to his vegetarian diet, she secretly fortified his vegetable broth with meat to build up his strength. She knitted caps for him and cut and sewed warm shirts. Although somewhat annoyed by this oppressive solicitudc, he was happy to be the center of the family's attention. Every time he went out, his walk became a little longer. He cautiously resumed his gymnastics. Then, one morning, with Sasha's help, he heaved himself into the saddle and set out for a ride, aglow with satisfaction. "It seemed that his capacity for loving life, flowers, trees, children, everything around him, had actually increased since his illness," wrote Sasha. Back from a ramble, he came up to her with sunburned face, white beard and hair in a tangle and eyes shining with joy, his shirt collar open over his protruding collarbones, and thrust out his hat filled with mushrooms.