"A fresh act of violence has been committed in our neiglilx)rhood, and has stunned the entire population of the region. . . . Chertkov's crime is plain: it is his friendship for Tolstoy, and the fervor with which he serves his ideas. And what ideas? That it is wrong to kill, that we should love everyone, that it is wrong to oppose evil by violence, that the bloodshed of the revolution must be stopped, etc. Chertkov's expulsion and the punishment inflicted on all who dare to read and cncouragc others to read Tolstoy's books are expressions of petty resentment toward an old man, whose creations have contributed to the glory of Russia. Everyone knows how dearly Leo Nikolaycvich loves Chertkov. ... I have carefully observed Chertkov's life and teachings and although I do not share the majority of his views or those of Tolstoy, particularly as regards the denial of the Church, I can affirm that the object of all Chertkov's efforts has been to communicate the love of one's fellow man and the need for moral betterment to all. More than once he has dissuaded young peasants from revolution and other acts of violence."
Neither Sonya's expostulations nor the efforts of Chertkov's influential friends succeeded in having the decision against him repealed. "I miss Chertkov," Tolstoy sorrowfully noted in his diary on April 15, 1909. He began to languish, like an abandoned wife. Sonya worried about him. She had grown so nervous that she could not sit still for more than ten minutes, or listen to a conversation or conccntratc on a book. Life seemed a tissue of insoluble problems, and if she were to stand idle for one minute, sickness and poverty would immediately descend upon the family. To occupy her mind, she developed photo-
graphs. Every window ledge was cluttered with basins full of chemicals. She ran from one to the other, her fingers yellow with acid stains, muttering:
"Of course, Lyovochka has an easy life. He doesn't care about anything. He just goes peacefully on his way."
Silent, patient, his musclcs taut, Tolstoy waited out the storm. Watching his wife flutter about the house, he was torn between pity and anger. He had so much to say to her! But if he opened his mouth she would contradict him, and their conversation would end in a fight. To get some of the weight off his chest and maintain his self-possession, he resorted to a system of posthumous letters. "You will receive this letter after I have ceased to be," he wrote to Sonya on May 13, 1909. "Pardon me for all the wrong I have done you throughout our long life together, especially in the early days. I have nothing to forgive you. You have been as your mother made you, a good and faithful wife, and an excellent, admirable mother. But because you were the way your mother made you, and remained that way and did not want to changc, because you refused to try to improve yourself, to move ahead toward greater goodness and truth, because you clung with a kind of obstinacy to everything that was worst and most contrary to what I considered desirable, you did a great deal of harm to others and to yourself, you lowered yourself more and more until you reached the lamentable state you arc in now." This letter did not get beyond the state of a rough draft.
In June, Tolstoy went to Kochety to visit his son-in-law Sukhotin, escorted by Sonya, Dr. Makovitsky, Gusev and a servant. At the station, a coach was waiting to drive them to the estate. Along the road, Tolstoy noticcd that the peasants took their caps off as they passed. "In their placc," he said, leaning toward Gusev, "I would spit at the sight of these horses and these huge estates, while they don't even have a post to prop up their collapsing shanty." After a tour of the countryside he wrote in his diary, "A painful sensation of poverty, no, not poverty, of debasement, of animal apathy in the people. The revolutionaries' cruclty and madness are excusable. . . . Conversation in French and tennis, and alongside them starving slaves in tatters, limp from overwork. I cannot bear it, I feel like running away."
But he did not run away, and he even found life so pleasant in his daughter's house, where he was petted and spoiled and respected, that he let Sonya return to Yasnaya Polyana alone. But what Tanya had not told her mother was that Chertkov, forbidden to live in the government of Tula, was looking for a house along the frontier of the government of Orel, near Kochety. "My plans are indefinite," Tolstoy wrote to
Sonya on June 28, "because I don't know yet whether I shall be able to meet Chertkov, which I desire as intensely as he does himself, poor man!" At last, the beloved disciple located an isba for rent in the village of Suvorovo, two miles from Kochety. 'lhe moment Tolstoy heard the news, he climbed 011 his horse ancl rode through the woods with pounding heart, straight to the little house in which the man of his life was awaiting him. "Radiant meeting," he was to record in his diary. He went to Suvorovo several times, always in the same state of exaltation. "I shall put off my departure," he said. Sonya, however, was beginning to complain and reluctantly he set out for Yasnaya Polyana on July 3, 1909.
The homecoming was stormy. Sonya began by upbraiding Lyovochka for seeing Chertkov behind her back. Then she rebuked him for deciding to attend the World Peace Congress in Stockholm.
"I must use my position to speak up and say what no one else, perhaps, would dare to say," he explained to his wife.
She replied that at his age he had no business going so far away. She was probably right to fear the fatigues of the journey, the official receptions and lectures, but, as always, she had no diplomacy. At the slightest sign of disagreement she began to threaten, whine and sob. Sonya was suffering from neuralgia in her shoulder ancl claimed that he was to blame because he was mentally torturing her.
"Promise me you won't go. What does it cost you to promise?" she wailed.
"I cannot give it up, Sonya! It's my duty to go," lie said.
"Ow, ow! You're trying to kill mel You are a cruel man, you have no pity!"7
"If she could only know, realize," he wrote on July 12, "how she alone is poisoning the last hours, days, months of my life!"
Sasha encouraged him to stand fast, but perhaps she only did so in order to contradict her mother; if Sonya had been urging him to attend the World Peace Congress, his daughter might well have been indignantly opposed to the idea. lie 110 longer knew what to think or whom to follow, and nevertheless, obeying the dictates of his conscicncc, he prepared his address to the Stockholm Congress on the incompatibility between the Christian spirit and military service.
The conflict over the trip had not yet died down when another arose, more complex and more serious. Chertkov had allowed Three Deaths and Childhood to be published without payment of royalties, ancl as both had been written before 1881, they were covered by the agreement between Sonya and her husband under which she retained the copyright. At the instigation of her sons Ilya and Andrey, who were
hard up just then, she talked of suing the overenterprising publishers. But her nephew Ivan Deniscnko, who was a magistrate, advised her that she could not be sure of winning the case, and Tolstoy threatened to revoke his power of attorney if she went to court. In a white fury Sonya screamed at him:
"You don't care whether your family is driven out to beg! You want to give all your rights to Chertkov and let your grandchildren starve to death!"8
One scene followed another, each more violent and absurd than the last. "They came to wake me up," Tolstoy wrote on July 21. "Sonya had not slept all night. I went to her. It was quite insane. She claimed that Dushan [Makovitsky] had poisoned her, etc. I am exhausted, I can't take any more, I feel absolutely sick. I sec that it is impossible for me to preserve a reasonable and affectionate attitude, utterly impossible. ... I have given serious thought to going away. All right; show your Christian spirit, it's now or never. I have a terrible desire to run away. I doubt that my prcscncc here is of any use at all. A costly sacrifice, that serves no earthly purpose to anyone. Help me, my God, guide me! All I want is to do thy will, not mine."