In spite of this steady stream of visitors, he worked hard. A story, The Khodanka, articles, the introduction to The Ways of Life, hundreds of letters . . .He was corresponding with Bernard Shaw, whose plays he considered "crude and untrue"; with Gandhi, whom he deeply admired, "except for his Hindu patriotism, which spoils everything"; with strangers, who criticized him or asked him for advice. To replace Gusev as his secretary, Chertkov had recommended Valentin Fyodoro- vich Bulgakov, a sensitive, cultivated young man whom the master liked for his integrity and gentle manner. Why, lie even showed sympathy for Sonya's complaints! "They" had told him she was selfish, devious and
domineering, but he found her simple and understanding. Ilis worship of Tolstoy did not prevent him from viewing the protagonists in the drama impartially. Of course, he, too, kept a diary. Before his departure for Yasnaya Polyana, Sergeyenko had supplied him with specially made notebooks and carbon paper to place between the pages. He was to write his daily notes in invisible ink, tear off the copy along the dotted line and send it to Krekshino; by this means, Chertkov hoped to be informed of Tolstoy's every word and deed by a reliable witness. However, Bulgakov soon lost patience with this form of amusement, which was altogether too much like espionage; he continued to keep his diary, but stopped sending secret reports to his "chicfs."
He liked Yasnaya Polyana, he found it "an aristocratic place." Every morning, when he saw Tolstoy in his rough white linen blouse, with his hands stuck through his belt, his broad white beard and keen eyes, he experienced a feeling of religious joy and awe. The master often took him along on his walks, and questioned him, eager to learn the opinions of a boy of twenty-four on the problems that were tormenting him. Although he despised "novelty" and "progress," the old man marveled at the new technical inventions. Within a few months he had been introduced to the phonograph, the mechanical piano and the cinema. On a visit to Yasnaya Polyana, the author Leonid Andreyev spoke of the future of the latter device and Tolstoy said he would certainly write a scenario for a film. At dinner the following day, he returned to the subject, and said he had been thinking about it all night:
"Just imagine, with this technique one could reach huge masses of people, all the peoples of the earth! . . . One could write four, five, ten, fifteen films."16
A few days later he went out to the Kiev road to watch the Moscow- Orel automobile race. He had never seen these diabolical contraptions before, rumbling, coughing, spitting, shrouded in smoke and dust. The drivers, wearing their sporty caps and huge goggles, recognized him and chccrcd. One of them stopped to let Tolstoy peer into the motor; he shook his head and wished the driver good luck.
"I suppose," he later said to Bulgakov, "I will not live to see airplanes. But those fellows [pointing to the village children] will ccrtainly fly. Personally, I would rather see them till the soil or wash clothes." And that same evening, he anxiously confided to Dr. Makovitsky: "Automobiles, in our Russian world! There are people who have no shoes, and here are automobiles costing twelve thousand rubles."17
The next day he was to leave for his daughter Tanya's home at Kochety, with Bulgakov and Dr. Makovitsky. Sonya, who was not going with them, helped him to pack. At the station a cameraman was grinding feverishly away. Although the party had bought third-class tickets, they had to travel in second class bccausc all the third-class compartments were full. Tolstoy worried over this irregularity and mistakenly supposed that it was another plot of Sonya's, to spare him added fatigue.
"It's illegal, illegal," he repeated irritably.
He protested so vociferously that one of the conductors finally found him a seat in a third-class car. Once he was settled on the hard bench, he calmed down and began to stare out into the immensity of the landscape. Sitting opposite him, Bulgakov observed him with love. "His head and the expression of his face and eyes and lips were strange and wonderful!" he wrote. "The depth of his soul shone out of his features. It was not his wicker traveling hamper, nor that third-class compartment that was the right setting for him—it was the whole vast pale blue sky which this great man sat staring out at unwaveringly."18
3. Last Will and Testament
The first few days at Koehety were sheer delight. For Tolstoy, far from Sonya, nature was beautiful, people were kind and his cares light as air. Ilis letters to Sasha, still convalescing on the shores of the Black Sea, were all variations on a new theme: the joy of living. "I walk in the park, the nightingales arc singing all around me, the lilies of the valley are so lovely that I cannot refrain from picking some and my joyful soul is filled with good feelings, each better than the last."
After this burst of light-hcartcdncss, however, his old remorse came back to him: "Once again I am painfully oppressed by the luxury and idleness of the rich," he wrote. "Everybody is working, but not I. Painful, painful . . And he would run to write a letter to Sasha: "I feci an increasing need to describe all the folly and ignominy of our lives of luxury and brutality, surrounded by starving, half-naked people being eaten alive by vermin, living in chickcn coops."2
He was suspicious of the very kindness some masters showed toward their servants or peasants. It was merely a disguised form of domination, worse than outright despotism. The charms of Koehety were beginning to pall when—giving new life to everything—Chertkov arrived. The two men embraced tearfully. For eight days they engaged in a sweeping exchange of confidences, punctuated by the discreet click of camera shutters. Some of the master's photos were taken by Chertkov himself, others by a photographer he had chosen. They parted on May 20, promising to meet again soon.
A week after his return to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy had the joy of welcoming Sasha back from the Crimea, completely cured, hale and hearty, with her hair cropped short like a boy's (her head had been shaved during her illness), and her faithful Varvara Fcokritova by her side. At the sight of these two minions of Chertkov, Sonya's anxiety
welled up again. While Saslia's big manly hands were moving over the keyboard of the Remington, her mother prowled about the house, scolding the servants and feeling an outcast in her own home. She announced to one and all that she was exhausted, that nobody ever gave a thought to her, that the management of the estate was too much for a woman of sixty-six. "Who's forcing you to do it?" said Tolstoy. He recommended a trip, to take her mind off her troubles. "You're driving me away!" she cried. "You're trying to get rid of me!" And she fled, uttering dire imprecations. People were sent after her, on foot and horseback. They found her some distance from the house, sitting at the bottom of a ditch. She came back in a dogcart, relaxed and full of forgiveness.
A second incident followed immediately upon the first, this time causcd by the young Circassian guard, Akhmet, whom Sonya had hired some months before to guard the estate in place of the police agents furnished by the governor until 1909. Akhmet cut an imposing figure in his black tunic decorated with cartridge belts, a sword at his side and a Persian-lamb cap perched on his head. But he was a narrow-minded brute, who stopped the peasants from walking on the "lord's" woods and fields, terrorized them with threats and occasionally beat them and molested their wives. On June 4, he arrested a muzhik, Vlasov—a former pupil of Tolstoy's—for stealing a sapling, and dragged him, tied to his knout, all the way to the house to be reprimanded by the countess. Hearing of this, Tolstoy felt "a weight on his heart." He would not allow a savage Circassian in Sonya's employ to interfere with a peasant he knew and loved, on account of "a branch he had pickcd up without permission." He asked Sonya to fire the guard, whose presence was, moreover, an insult to his theories on the evils of property. She refused, wept and wrote in her diary: "He is torturing himself and he is torturing me." He, meanwhile, was writing: "Emotions, upsets. It's very painful. Keep wanting to cry." The next day, feeling ill, he came home from his walk earlier than usual and lay down, his pulse weak and his memory uncertain. Seeing how feeble he had become, Sonya did not have the heart to try to prevent him from going to spend a few days in Chertkov's new home, at Meshcherskoye, near Moscow. This represented such a sacrifice for her that after making it she wondered what demon had induccd her to give in.