t The book was not published until 1912, two years after Tolstoy's death.
Among these important pages were Hadji Murad and The Living Corpse, but also articles and short stories—T/ie False Coupon and After the Ball—and letters to prominent people. There was a pogrom in Kishinev in August 1903, and he expressed his indignation in very sharp terms. A declaration he had composed was given to the governor of Kishinev:
"Profoundly shocked by the atrocities committed at Kishinev, we extend our heartfelt sympathy to the innocent victims of mob savagery and express our horror at the acts of cruelty perpetrated by Russians, our scorn and disgust with all who have driven the people to such a pass and have allowed this dreadful crime to be committed."
In December of that year he learned that his aunt-babushka Alexandra Tolstoy was critically ill. His friendship for her had cooled considerably of late because of her insistent efforts to bring him back to the Orthodox Church. He had delighted in wrestling with her while she was robust and militant on her feet, but he could not restrain his Sympathy when lie knew she was on her deathbed. lie wrote a tender letter to her on December 22, thanking her for all the good she had done for him during their "half-century of friendship." Deeply touched, she answered that in reading his letter she had heard once again "that note of utter sincerity" that had resounded between them in the days of their youth. A few months later, on March 21, 1904, the old maid of honor, aged eighty-six, passed away in her apartment in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. With her disappeared the faithful friend and confidante, ever-ready to do battle for the cherished nephew whose ideas she abhorred. However, Tolstoy was not as deeply affected by her death as those around him had feared. He felt his own end so close at hand that lie no longer had any inclination to weep for others. In August 1904, another trial affected him more powerfully: at the age of seventy-eight, his brother Sergey was dying in agony, of cancer of the tongue. He, too, had becomc estranged from his younger brother when Leo began to preach his neo-Christian gospel, his condemning him for exhorting others to practice abstinence and poverty while he lived on in sin and plenty. But family tics ultimately prevailed over ideological differences, and relations between the two old men had improved toward the end.
Although he hated the Tolstoyans, Sergey often came to Yasnaya Polyana. And Leo, who did not bear grudges, went to see him at Pirogovo. Sergey's estate, with its graveled walks, neatly trimmed hedges and trees aligned in military precision, was the complete opposite of ragged and untidy Yasnaya Polyana, where the vegetation proliferated in defiance of any order or control. Unlike his brother, who dressed like
a muzhik and made his own boots, Sergey lived as a lord in the old manner, authoritarian, aloof, elegant, hot-tempered. His peasants bowed to him from a distance and were afraid of him. His wife (the ex- gypsy Masha) did not dare raise her voice in his presence. His three daughters, unmarried and in their forties, never dreamed that a suitor might one day comc along who would be bold enough to ask their taciturn, chilling father for their hands. Besides, they had all read their uncle's Kreutzer Sonata and saw marriage in the grimmest possible light—which did not prevent one of them from murmuring, in French, "We are just a covey of old maids and our children will be a covey of old maids, too," without noticing the inconsistency between the two terms of her proposition. Their father, otherwise a misanthrope, doted on them, but it was difficult for him to show his emotions. He shut himself up in his study for days on end, calculating the income from his property. Sometimes he was heard through the wall, uttering heartrending sighs, "Ah, ah, ah!" His wife was used to them: "It's Sergey, thinking about something," she said. When he came out of his study he hurriedly slammed the door behind him, to prevent any flies from entering it; he had a honor of flies and gnats. Also of artists, professors, tradesmen, favor-seekers, socialites and ostentatious people. He was eccentric and sardonic; his nephew Ilya compared him to old Prince Bolkonsky in War and Peace.
When the end drew near, Tolstoy went to Pirogovo to spend a few day's. The gypsy and his three daughters wanted the dying man to confess and take communion, but they were afraid to suggest it because he had long since given up practicing any form of religion. At their entreaty, the younger brother and excommunicated author undertook this mission for them, and, to satisfy his family, Sergey agreed to see a priest.
On the day of the funeral, in spite of his age, Tolstoy helped carry the coffin to the coach. When he returned to Yasnaya Polyana, he told Sonya how he had parted from his "incomprehensible and beloved" brother. And in his Reminiscences, intended to fill the gaps in the biography Biryukov was writing he added: "In his old age, toward the end, Sergey became fonder of me again and set great store by my attachment to him. He was proud of me, he would have liked to agree with me but he could not; and he remained as he had always been, utterly unique, utterly himself, very handsome, aristocratic, proud and, above all, a more upright and honest man than any I have ever known."
3. The Russo-Japanese War
Although deprived of the amusements of the big city, Sonya led a very active life at Yasnaya Polyana. She sorted her husband's huge correspondence, answered some letters for him, catalogued the books lie received from publishers, compiled press clippings and glued them into albums, exposed, developed and printed her own photographs, picked up all the bits of paper lying about the house and burned them, weeded the driveway in front of the house . . . She learned to type; then she developed a passion for painting, and copied the family portraits in the drawing room; she also had a try at literature and published in the periodical Life a prose-poem she had written; it was entitled "Moan" and signed, "A weary woman."1 Her passion for music continued unabated: whenever she had an hour to spare, she sat down to play, badly, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn or Tanayev. . . .
This round of secondary activities did not interfere with her masterful administration of the estate, nursing of her husband, keeping of her diary, and her duties as hostess to the guests who made pilgrimages to Yasnaya Polyana. After lunch, while Lyovochka was taking a nap, she sometimes turned guide, to show a group of sight-seers through the house. It was as though the great man had already died and she were the keeper of his museum; as though a light were being reflected upon her, from the depths of the Beyond. How she loved him, how she admired him, when he was not there to disappoint her. But the moment she was face to face with him again, at the dinner table, in the drawing room or outside in the grounds, she was irritated by everything he did. One day he jibed at the stupidity and smugness of the medical profession. Had he forgotten that she was a doctor's daughter, or was he offending her on purpose? "It makes me furious," she noted. "Now, yes, he is in good health; but after the Crimea, where nine doctors
struggled with such devotion and intelligence to save his life, he ought not—if he were a decent and honest man—to treat them in such a way." Even so, she would have held her tongue had he not added that, according to Rousseau, doctors were all in league with women. "At that, I exploded. If he doesn't believe in medicine, why did he call for the doctors and wait for them and do what they told him?"2 When her anger subsided, she lccturcd herself: after all, her husband was a genius. Could she, with her tiny brain, understand and judge him? "I must remember that his mission is to teach man, to write and prcach," she wrote in her diary four days later. "His life and ours and those of all who are close to him must serve that end and it is therefore our duty to take the best care of him that we can. We must close our eyes to his compromises and absurdities and contradictions, and see only the great author, the prcachcr and master, in Leo Nikolayevich."