"Couldn't you find me an isba in your village, never mind how small it is, as long as it is by itself, and warm, so that I will disturb you and your family no longer than absolutely necessary? If I were to send you a telegram I would not sign my own name, but T. Nikolaycv. I await your answer. ... I warn you, this must be kept between ourselves."
The next day he wrote in his Diary for Myself Alone: "Suspicions, espionage, desire that she should furnish me with a pretext to go; and when I think of the state she is in I feel sorry for her and cannot." He told Sasha of his plan and proposed that she come with him.
"Oh, yes!" she said, flushing with pleasure. "But I wouldn't want to get in your way. In the beginning, it might be better if I let you go alone."
"Yes, yes; besides, I keep telling myself that your health is not good enough, you will catch a cold, you'll start coughing . . ."
"That's nothing!" said the girl. "I will feel much better living in more simple surroundings."
"If that is true, then it will be very pleasant for me to havic you with me, as a helper. Here is how I plan to proceed; I shall buy a ticket to Moscow, send somebody over to Laptevo0 with my things, and get off the train there myself. If I am discovered, I'll go on farther. There, now; for the moment, this is nothing but dreams. I shall certainly worry myself to death if I leave her, her condition will torture me. But then, the atmosphere here is becoming harder for me to bear every day."1*
He also wanted to know what Dr. Makovitsky thought of his plan. The doctor saw no objection to it, either as disciple or as physician. But old Marya Schmidt, whom he also took into his confidence, reacted very differently.
"My dear Leo Nikolayevich, you'll get over it, this is only a passing weakness," she said.
And Tolstoy sadly realized that his conscicncc would not allow him to take such a brutal and selfish step.
That day there was a large gathering at Yasnaya Polyana. One of the guests was Mrs. Almedingen, an author of children's books, who had actually come 011 behalf of the Prozveshenye publishing company to try to persuade the countess to sell her rights to the posthumous publication of her husband's complete works. Although neither Mrs. Almedingen nor Sonya alluded to the scheme in front of Tolstoy, he guessed at it and was annoyed by it.
On October 26, the arrival of Andrey, followed by Sergey, destroyed his last trace of good humor. Andrey particularly—that narrow-minded reactionary—was a bane to him; and as for Sergey, a neighbor in the country' had just challenged him to a duel, after some absurd quarrel; very probably, nothing would come of it, but Sonya sighed and moaned and made a great display of maternal anguish. "It is very painful for me to find myself in this madhouse," the old man wrote. But he put on a smiling countenance for his sons the next day, which cost him a considerable effort. The dinner-table conversation touched on every subject except Chertkov and the will. Sonya, in her Sunday best, sat in state between her two tall bearded sons. Tolstoy soon slipped away from his guests and went for a ride with Dr. Makovitsky.
A light snow was falling from the gray sky. The ground was frozen and slippery, and the riders had to dismount to cross a gullcy. Dr. Makovitsky took both horses by the bridle and forced them to jump
0 Station on the Moscow-Kwsk line, a few vcrsts from the village in which Novikov lived.
the stream with him. 'I'olstoy, tucking up the flaps of his short cloak, slithered down the slope, clinging to the branches of the pine trees, and then toiled up the opposite bank on all fours, grunting with effort.20 After a ten-mile ride he returned home exhausted and stooping, his eyes blank and his beard damp with snow.
In the meantime, Bulgakov had brought a letter from Chertkov. Sonya wanted to know what was in it. Tolstoy refused to tell her, "on principle." A quarrel broke out. Once again, with her head shaking from side to side and her eyes bulging, Sonya demanded that her husband tell her whether it was true that he had signed a will disinheriting her and her children. Once again, his only answer was equivocal and cowardly silence. She was making him feel permanently guilty, yet he could not turn against Chertkov. Caught between the woman who personified his life and the man who personified his doctrine, he himself no longer knew which way to turn.
Toward eleven that evening he withdrew to his study with his mind in a whirl, and wrote in his diary, "It looks bad, but at bottom it is good. Our relations are weighing upon me more and more." Then he read a few pages of The Brothers Karamazov—the chapter dealt with OmitTy Karamazov's hatred of his old father. Which of the two families, Karamazov or Tolstoy, was the more horrible? His thoughts began to stray, full of obscure unease, and he laid the book down open on the round table. No doubt about it, he did not like that book: "I cannot overcome my repulsion for all I find in it that is anti-artistic, superficial, attitudinizing, irrelevant to the great problems," he had written to Mrs. Chertkov a few days before.21 No, no, Dostoyevsky was not one of the great writers. How could critics presume to talk about the author of The Brothers Karamazov in the same breath as the author of War and Peace, even if only to oppose them? Mcrezhkovsky's book was ridiculous! Besides, Tolstoy couldn't care less what they said about his writing. His life was what mattered. Would he ever find a way out of his present predicament? He prayed to God for help, lay down and, at half past eleven, blew out his candle.
4. Flight
On October 28, 1910, at three o'clock in the morning Tolstoy awoke with a start. A door creaked open, footsteps approached, a gown rustled as it brushed against a piece of furniture. From his study, a ray of light shone beneath the closed door. Sitting up in bed, the old man held his breath and listened. Soon he heard a shuffle of paper, and knew that Sonya was going through his desk drawers. "So, day and night, she has to know my every word and deed, and have everything under her control,"1 he thought with a shudder of disgust. Motionless, he waited until his wife went away and then tried to go back to sleep, but he could not: his overwrought brain refused. lie lighted his candle and sat on the side of his bed, with his legs hanging down. Drawn by the light, Sonya came into his bedroom. Was he ill? Did he need anything? At the sight of his solicitous jailkeeper, in her nightgown, with her hair undone, her pasty face and her black, sharp eyes, a fresh wave of anger rose up in him. However, he controlled himself, reassured her and advised her to go back to bed.
After she left, his heart was pounding so wildly that he was afraid he would have an attack. Automatically, he felt for his pulse: ninety- seven. Suddenly, it was clear to him that he could not go 011 living like this, under the double surveillance of Sonya, demanding that he act for the good of the family, and Chertkov, demanding that lie act for the good of his soul.
All the inconsistencies of his entire life spread before his eyes and his mind reeled in horror. He preached universal love—and made his wife miserable; poverty—and lived in luxury; forgetfulness of self—and recorded his every twinge; fusion with God—and wasted his life in domestic bickerings; contempt for fame—and curried his celebrity with correspondence, receptions, photographs; the worship of truth—and