Now Sonya was demanding, not only that he stay away from the Congress, but also that he make her the sole heir to all his work, whether written before or after 1881. As he would not yield on either point, she lost all self-control and pretended to poison herself with morphine. He tore the flask out of her hand and threw it down the stairway, while she burst out sobbing. Back in his room he forced himself to think calmly, and finally decided to decline the invitation to Sweden. "I went to tell her," lie wrote. "She is pitiful; I feel truly sorry for her. But how instructive. All I had to do was a little work on myself. Ilie moment I had made this effort to master myself, everything was straightened out.""
Sonya calmcd down a little, Sasha reproved her father for capitulating, and Tolstoy saw that the truce would be short-lived. While Dr. Makovitsky was massaging his leg, he said, "I speak to you as to a close friend. I should like to leave home and go somewhere, abroad. How can I manage a passport? No one must know about it, at least for a month." Dr. Makovitsky told him that it was possible to arrange travel on those conditions, but that he had heard the countcss say that she now intended to go to Stockholm with her husband. The old man frowned and growled that that was mere noise: "I do not want to be dependent upon a hysterical creature," he concluded. "Her illness is mental, not physical, it is based on egoism."10
Fortunately, the arrival of Lyovochka's sister Marya Tolstoy on July
29 succeeded in quieting Sonya, for she loved and respected the pious old woman, a nun in the convent of Shamardino. More guests came, as in other years, to spend a few days or weeks at Yasnaya Polyana. Despite his fatigue and ill health, Tolstoy took pleasure in discussing art with the painters Botkin and Parkhomenko (the latter was doing a portrait of him), land reform with the Assembly representatives Tenishev and Maklakov, and mathematics and geometry with the Russian physicist Tsinger. One evening in August he was playing chess with Goldcnwciscr when a police commissioner and his men arrived at the house. By order of the minister of the interior, he had come to arrest Gusev, the author's secretary. White with anger, Tolstoy demanded to see the warrant. It was presented: Gusev was ordered into exile for two years, to Cherdyn in the government of Perm, for "revolutionary propaganda and circulation of forbidden books." While the dogs barked at the police wagon, the inhabitants of Yasnaya Polyana gathered around the unfortunate young man. Tolstoy helped him to pack his bag and Sasha slipped a copy of War and Peace into it, which the fervent Tol- stoyan still had not read. Sister Marya, the nun, did not understand what was going on, shook her old head under her tall black headdress and spat in the direction of the commissioner:
"Pah! Pah! Why do they arrest such a good man?"
After the police had cscortcd their prisoner away, Tolstoy swallowed his tears and shut himself up in his study. The next day, August 5, he wrote in his diary, "Yesterday the bandits came for Gusev and took him away. The parting was perfect, both his attitude toward us and that of everyone else toward him. Yes, it was all perfect. Today I wrote a protest about it."
This protest was published in a great many newspapers, and the minister of the interior instructed the high commissioner of police to convey his dissatisfaction to the governor of Tula at the way in which his subordinates had handled the case: "Instead of arresting Gusev at the police station, where you might easily have summoned him, the police decided to enter Count L. Tolstoy's property and allowed the accused only one hour in which to prepare for his departure. This behavior on the part of the local authorities—utterly unjustified by the circumstances—has merely fanned the flames of Count L. Tolstoy's notoriety (which was, of course, to be exacted) and provoked a scries of emotional articles in the press designed to cast the said Count Tolstoy in the role of a victim of arbitrary government action."
After Gusev's arrest, Tolstoy's desire to see Chertkov grew more intense. Sonya held out for a while, but finally relented and made prepa-
rations herself for her husband's departure for Krekshino,! where the exiled disciple was still living. On September 3, 1909, Tolstoy set out, with Sasha, Dr. Makovitsky and Ivan Sidorkov, a servant, at his side. Such was the patriarch's fame that Pathd-News had applied for permission to film him leaving Yasnaya Polyana. Despite his refusal, reporters and photographers had hidden in the bushes. A camera had been set up on the station platform and the cameraman was cranking away. Furious, the old man stomped past the lens with his head hunched between his shoulders.
Upon reaching Moscow he had to withstand a fresh onslaught of journalists. The travelers stayed in the old family home on Khamov- nichcsky Street, which Sasha found ugly, dilapidated and gloomy in comparison with the palace of her memory. Her brother Sergey and sister-in-law Marya now lived in it. The next day Tolstoy wanted to look at the city he had not seen for eight years. "He was amazed at the tall houses, trolley's and traffic," wrote Goldenweiser. "He was frightened by the immense human anthill, and every step brought fresh confirmation of his long-standing hatred of so-called civilization."
He did admit, however, that civilization had its good points, when he was taken to Zimmermann's Music Shop to hear Chopin played by Paderewski on the mechanical piano. "It's marvelousl A wonder!" he said. "How does it work?" He was still talking about it on the train to Krekshino. The day after he arrived at the Chertkovs', the mechanical piano joined him: a gift from Zimmermannl He did not have the strength to refuse it, and the instrument was installed in the big drawing room.
But people had not come all that way to hear recorded music. A brotherhood of the faithful had gathered about the Chertkov's' and was waiting for the sanctifying visit of the messiah. Peasants, country schoolteachers, neighbors . . . The first days were spent in philosophical or educational discussions. As always in the Chertkov household, masters and servants ate together at the same table, to the great discomfiture of Ivan Sidorkov, the manservant Tolstoy had brought with him.
Back at Yasnaya Polyana, Sonya was already sorry she had let her husband fly away to his tryst with his disciple. Nothing good could come of their meeting. Tolstoy had not been a week at Krekshino before she turned up herself, and was greeted with forced enthusiasm. She had twisted her ankle on the way and the pain made her particularly shrewish; nothing pleased her in this sordid phalanstery. She peered
t Krekshino was twenty-four miles from Moscow.
at her tablemates through her lorgnette and when her eyes came to rest on Sidorkov, the servant, the poor wretch tried to shrink into his bench, hoping to offer a smaller target for his mistress's displeasure. However, she controlled her ill-humor during the ensuing days and tried to fit herself into her hosts' way of life. She did not dream that Lyovochka, encouraged by his disciple and daughter, had just drawn up a will bequeathing everything he had written after January 1881 to the public and instructing that all his manuscripts be turned over to Chertkov, who alone would decide the terms of their publication.
Tolstoy would have preferred to go straight back to Yasnaya Polyana, but Sonya insisted on stopping off in Moscow. At the station, the old man was again terrified by the crush of journalists and photographers. But on the evening of his arrival he consented to go to a film showing in the Arbat district. It was his first experience of an event of this type and he marveled at the moving shapes on the screen. But the program was disappointing. "Views of places, a melodrama, and something comical at the end." Leaving the theater he said, "What a wonderful instrument this could be in the schools, for studying geography and the way people live. But it will be prostituted. Like everything else." The next day Sasha, accredited by him and by Chertkov, made a secret call on Muravyev, the lawyer, to submit the will drawn up at Krekshino. Muravyev read the paper through several times and shook his head: