In this struggle for supremacy, the two antagonists began recruiting allies. Sonya would have liked to see all her children lined up behind her. But Sergey and Tanya maintained a judicious neutrality and Sasha was beyond recall; and although Ilya, Andrcy, Michael and Leo sided with their mother, they most often did so by letter, for they seldom came to Yasnaya Polyana. On his side, Chertkov had the pianist Gol- denweiser, Varvara Feokritova, who was helping with the copy-work, Dr. Dushan Makovitsky, and the Tolstoyan secretaries. Last and most important, he won Sasha's confidence.
When lie left Russia, she was a mere child of thirteen to whom he attached scant importance. Now she was a young woman of twenty- three, solidly built, with a heavy chest, rough gestures and a boyish appearance, who loved horses and dogs. Her broad face was illuminated by an unflinching, loyal gaze. She had a violent temper, was incapable of deception and was equally extreme in her loves and her hates. Since
she adored her father she might, like Sonya, have resented Chertkov's intrusion in the house, and in fact his high-handed ways had offended her at first. But since the fight had to be waged two against one, she preferred to join forces with Chertkov against her mother rather than with her mother against Chertkov. For one thing, her mother had never liked her. There was more than a lack of spiritual rapport between them; there was positive physical incompatibility. As soon as they were in the same room they infuriated each other, provoked each other in an electrically charged atmosphere. The servants had told die girl that when Vanichka died the grief-maddened countcss had moaned, "Why him? Why not Sasha?" and Sasha never forgot that fatal sentcncc. Later, she had seen her mother making a fool of herself over Tanayev and humiliating the admirable man whose reputation ought to have been dearer than life to her. She had witnessed heartrending quarrels between her parents. A hundred times, she thought that if she had been in Sonya's place, she would have known how to make Tolstoy happy. Perhaps she even imagined herself as his wife. Certainly, her father's age, which she could not help observing every day, removed any tracc of ambiguity from her fantasy. But her passionate wish to care for him, serve him and protect him—he, so weary and good!—nonetheless proceeded from an unconfcssed desire to supplant the unworthy partner by his side. She showed no interest in young men. She had no wish to marry. Ilcr sole desire was to becomc ever more closely united with the justice-losing patriarch whom she adored without reservation—his ideas, his white hair, his smell, his moments of weakness and his fame. She took his side at every opportunity. Her brother-in-law Obolcnsky wrote, "She used all her will and tenacity, and her growing influence over her father, to inflame their hostility [between Tolstoy and Sonya]."5
Tolstoy tried to ignore this struggle for possession of him. To preserve his own peace of mind he did everything to avoid sccnes with both Sonya and Chertkov. He wanted to devote the little life he had left to meditation. His country's future disturbed him: "We arc on the verge of a gigantic upheaval, in which the Duma will play absolutely no part," he said. "There arc only two weapons to use against the Russian government: bombs or love."
In January 1909, Parthenios, bishop of Tula, came to call on him and made another vain attempt to woo him back to Orthodoxy. As the frustrated prelate was about to depart, Sonya drew him aside and asked whether it was tTue that the Church would refuse her husband a religious burial. Parthenios uncomfortably answered that he would have to obey the instructions of the Holy Synod, but added, with a benevo-
lent smile, "Nevertheless, countess, do send word to me in case I.eo Nikolayevich should fall seriously ill."
When his wife informed him of the bishop's helpful attitude, Tolstoy immediately imagined that there was a plot between her and the clergy, became alarmed and wrote in his diary, on January 22, 1909, "I hope they are not going to invent some scheme to make people believe that I 'repented' before I died! For this reason, I declare, and I repeat, that I could no more return to the Church and take communion on my deathbed than I could use profanity or look at obscene pictures on my deathbed; consequently any reference to my repentance and communion before death would be untrue."
He felt that his strength was failing, which made him worry even more; he had a second attack of phlebitis in March. Was this the end? I Ie honestly believed it was. But his temperature dropped again a week later and he immediately began to curse his wretched body, whose use he was nevertheless grateful to regain. Lying between cool sheets in his l>cd, he felt himself powerless, in spite of his eighty years, to prevent a return of sexual desire, and the thought horrified him. On March 15 he was preparing to breathe his last, and on March 16 he wrote in his diary:
"It would be a hundred times easier to struggle against physical desire if carnal relations and the feelings that lead to them were not made to look poetical; if marriage were not presented as an admirable institution that makes people happy, whereas in at least nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of ten thousand, if not in all, it ruins their entire lives; if, from childhood to adulthood, people were persuaded that the sexual act (merely imagining a loved person in that posture is enough I) is an ignoble and bestial one that is meaningless unless it is uppermost in the minds of both partners that they are going to assume the heavy and complex responsibility of bearing a child and raising it to the best of their ability as a result of their intercourse."
Copying over these lines, Sasha must have been relieved to have no love in life but her father.
When the mild weather came he began to feel quite well again. On March 31 he was able to shufile through the snow-covered garden, lie was thinking of his sins, and particularly the most glaring of all, personified by Timothy, the natural child he had had by the peasant woman Axinya. In later years, she had married a muzhik, Ermil, but that had done nothing to alleviate Tolstoy's guilt. Timothy was a walking reproach, grooming the horses, climbing up onto the driver's seat, taking the reins: "Where am I to drive you, master?" And what about the legitimate children, who knew all? What must they think of
their father? A fornicator, a swine, a devil! "I looked at my bare feet," he wrote, "and I remembered Axinya. She is still alive. They say that Timothy is my son, and I have never even asked his pardon, I have not repented, I am not repenting every hour of the day, and I set myself up to criticize others!"®
His convalescence was saddened by the departure of Chertkov, who was expelled from the government of Tula for "subversive activities." Notified of the dccrce on March 6, the disciple managed to postpone his removal until the end of the month. He went to live with one of his aunts, at Krekshino, near Moscow. Sonya, secretly rejoicing to be rid of her rival, protested loudly against the arbitrary decision to punish him, and the gullible Tolstoy was touched by his wife's generous impulses. "Ah, if only she could rise above herself!" he wrote. But some of his friends were wondering whether Chertkov's eviction might not have been prompted by the very person who was now taking his defense. She sent a circular letter to Russian and foreign newspapers: