of the death of Christ came to my mind today with strange intensity. I thought of the insults, offenses and gibes heaped upon him and the long, slow death to which he was subjected; I saw his closest friends and relatives, powerless to approach him, compelled to witness the tragedy from afar; and I thought of his words, in the depth of his agony: 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do/"
While this was going 011, Sonya, twitching with impatience, had stationed herself at the window on the top floor of the house at Yasnaya Polyana, from which she could watch all the roads at oncc. Her son Leo was mounting guard at the entrance to the estate. But Sasha, guessing that they would be lying in wait for her, took another road back, entered through a ground-floor window and gave the diaries to her friend Varvara Fcokritova, who handed them to Tanya. Too late! Sonya, alerted by Leo, came bearing down upon her eldest daughter, tore the package away from her and hugged it to her breast like a mother who has found her long-lost child. Then she unwrapped the seven notebooks bound in black oilcloth ancl feverishly began to read them. Hearing Sasha's outraged erics, Michael Sukhotin, Tanya's husband, came running; he reasoned with his mother-in-law, took the diaries away from her, put them into an envelope and sealed it and put it away in a cupboard. Two days later he deposited the manuscripts in the name of Leo Tolstoy at the Tula branch of the national bank.
Still suspicious, Sonya demanded that her husband give her the key- to the strongbox containing the diaries. He refused and left the house. As he passed beneath her windows, she cried out: "Lyovochka! I drank a vial of opiuml"
He rushed up the stairs, reached the landing gasping for breath, opened the door and fell upon his weeping wife:
"I said it on purpose," she whimpered, "but I didn't drink it."fl Heartsick, he went to find Sasha and told her: "Go sec Maman and tell her that her behavior is forcing me to leave. I shall certainly go if she continues. As for the diaries, tell her I shall give the key to Michael Sergeyevich [Sukhotin]."
After a sharp scolding, Sonya calmed down sufficiently to tolerate, at least in theory, an occasional visit from Chertkov at Yasnaya Polyana. But as soon as she caught sight of him, she lost all self-control. True, the diaries were 110 longer in her rival's possession, but neither did she have the right to look at them. She had won only a half-victory. "He shies and snorts, knowing I have my eye on him and have seen through his self-righteous posing. lie would like to get even with me. But I'm not afraid of him,"7 she wrote. Then she turned on her husband: "By obstinately refusing to let mc have those notebooks he is keeping a
weapon ready to wound and punish me with. Ah, this sham Christian life, this meanness toward his fellow men, instead of the simple goodness and loyal openness that would hurt no one!"8
Life in the house was becoming so difficult that, with the approval of Sasha and Tanya, Tolstoy sent for mcdical help. On July 19, the famous psychiatrist Rossolimo, and Dr. Nikitin, a friend of the family, arrived at Yasnaya Polyana. Leo growled, "My mother isn't the one who needs treatment; her health is fine; but my father has gone into his second childhood."9 Courteous and disdainful, Sonya allowed the two men to examine her. They stayed overnight and concluded the following day that the countess was not suffering from a mental illness, but from "double degeneracy: paranoiac and hysterical, chiefly the former." For treatment, they recommended baths, walks and, above all, the separation of the couple. Sonya adamantly refused to leave Lyovochka, because she was sure that Chertkov would arrive within the hour to take her place beside him. The doctors yielded. While they were getting back into their coach, she stood, imperturbably repeating, "I shall stop being ill when the diaries have been returned to me!" And Tolstoy, filled with his old mistrust of medical men, wrote in his diary that evening, "Rossolimo is astonishingly stupid, in the way of scientists: absolutely no hope!"
The truth was that he had a guilty conscience. Two days before, on July 18, he had made a secret trip to Chertkov's house to rewrite his will, the final version of which was proving extremely ticklish to draft. After they thought everything had been provided for, Chertkov, alarmed by Sasha's recent illness, asked Muravyev to draw up a new will whereby, if she were to die before her fatlier, the copyrights would go to her elder sister, Tanya. This was the version Tolstoy had rccopicd and signed in the presence of three witnesses on the day before the psychiatrist's visit He hoped he had seen the last of this distasteful affair, when Chertkov informed him that the words "of sound mind and in full possession of his memory" had been omitted from the final draft, which might enable the heirs to break it on a point of form. So it had to be done over again. Anxious to avoid arousing Sonya's suspicions, Tolstoy decided not to go back to Telyatinki, but to arrange a meeting with the witnesses on July 22, in the forest. Sergeyenko—Chertkov's friend and advisor—his secretary Radinsky and Goldenweiser set off 011 horseback to meet the patriarch. They saw him waiting for them, on his faithful mare, the glossy-coated Dtflirc. Wearing a broad white hat, his white beard fanning out over his white blouse, he stood out, magnificent in his age and dignity, against the background of quivering leaves. The group rode on a little way under the trees, looking for a
suitable spot. Then they dismounted. The old man sat on a tree stump and unscrewed the top of an English fountain pen he had brought with him. Scrgcyenko handed him a blotter pad and a big sheet of paper. Radinsky held the paper he was to copy over, word for word.
"We look like conspirators," said Tolstoy as he braced the pad on his knees.
And he began to write, slowly and carcfully. It was cool beneath the branches. Sunspots flickered across the white page. The tethered horses swished their tails to drive away the flies. Far away, birds chattered, and furtive feet scampered through the underbrush. When he had finished, the old man signed his name, and the three witnesses followed suit. He thanked them, gave them the will and murmured, "What a trial all this has been," remounted his horse and rode home.
When he reached the house, Sonya's piercing glare made him fear she had guessed everything. Curiously, she had insisted that Chertkov comc to the house that evening, but as soon as she saw him she lashed out, "He won't give mc one day's rest!" forgetting that she had asked him to come. "There he is again!"
When Chertkov turned up at Yasnaya Polyana again the next day, her temper plunged from bad to worse. She caught him talking to Tolstoy in hushed tones, and they refused to tell her what they had been whispering about. With good reason: Tolstoy had just announced to his disciple that, in a letter appended to the will, he was giving Chertkov sole authority to revise and publish his work after his death. Furious at being left out of their secret, Sonya proffered some vague threats, went to her room and melancholically stroked her opium vial, but decided against suicide: "I don't want to give them all—Sasha included—the satisfaction of seeing me dead," she wrote in her diary. Transferring her fury to the "devil," she added, "I feel like killing Chertkov, or sticking something into his bloated body to release tlie soul of Leo Nikolayc- vich from his deleterious influence."