At one o'clock he sat down to dinner with a hearty appetite. He was served the monastery menu: cabbage soup and kasha with sunflower oil and he was delighted with this plain fare.
That afternoon lie went to Shamardino convent, nine miles away, where his eighty-year-old sister Marya lived as a nun. Her daughter Elizabeth was visiting her at the time. The two women received the old man affectionately, listened to his tale of his disputes, his dilemma and his flight, and succceded in pacifying him. From the moment he left Yasnaya Polyana, he had been counting irrationally on this meeting. For him, Marya was the sole survivor of his happy past, and in going to her, he was traveling back through time to inhale the fresh air of their childhood. Was it a sign of approaching death, this need to immerse himself in his infancy?
"My sister," he told her, "I have been to Optina. How pleasant it is there. I should be so happy to live there, performing the most menial and strenuous tasks. I would lay down only one condition: that I be exempt from church sen-ice."
That evening he ordered his baggage brought to the Shamardino convent inn and, the following morning, began to look for an isba to rent in the village. He found one, whose owner, a widow, would let him have it for three rubles a month. Why go farther? He would end his days at Shamardino. Beneath this glorious sky, occasionally punctuated by the clang of bells and muffled chanting of monastery choirs, his personal heresy and the Orthodox faith would get along very well together. A bargain was struck, and he promised his landlady to move into the isba on October 31.
While he was nursing this dream of a contemplative old age in the shadow of the monastery walls, a family council was in session at Yasnaya Polyana. All the Tolstoy children—except Leo, who was in Paris —had arrived at the homestead on October 29 in response to their youngest sister's summons. Assembled in her bedroom, they were debating their parents' respective wrongs. Sergey and Sasha alone stood up for their father; the others considered that he had been wrong to forsake their mother after preaching a Christian faith his whole life long, and that it was his duty to come back to her.
"If you try to make him come back, you'll be throwing the whole burden on the shoulders of a man of eighty-two!" cried Sasha.
But the pro-retuni party would not be deterred. They wrote to their father to recall him to the paths of duty.
"I know/' said Ilya in his letter, "how difficult your life is here. But you regarded that life as your cross and so did all who knew and loved you. I bitterly regret that you did not have the patience to bear your cross to the end. You arc eighty-two and Maman is sixty-seven. Your life- is behind you, but you still have to die honorably. I don't say you must come back, but for Maman's peace of mind, do not break off all relations with her, write to her, help her to get her emotions under control again, and afterward, may God be your guide."
Andrey was more gruff:
"It is my duty to inform you that by taking this decisive step you are killing our mother."
Sergey gave an altogether different opinion:
"I think that if something were to happen to Maman, which does not seem likely, you would not have to take any blame for it. The situation was hopeless and I think you chose the Ijest way out."
As usual, the gentle Tanya qualified her opinion:
"I will not condemn you; as for Maman, I will only say that she is pitiful and heart-rending. She cannot live any other way, and it is probable that she will never change fundamentally."
While this debate was going on between her grown-up children, Sonya wandered blindly through the house, clutching to her bosom a little pillow which her husband used to put under his cheek. "Dear Lyovochka, where is your thin little head lying now?" she mumbled. Or hissed between clenched teeth, "A savage beast! He tried to kill me!"
At last, she wrote an anguished letter to her husband:
"Lyovochka, my darling, come back home, my beloved, save me from turning to suicide again. Lyovochka, companion of my whole life, I'll do anything, everything you want, I'll give up every kind of luxury, your friends will be mine, I will take care of myself. I will be mild and gentle. My darling, my darling, come back, you have to save me. You know it is written in the Gospels that a man must not abandon his wife under any pretext. My darling, my beloved, friend of my soul, save me, come back, come back, if only to say good-bye to inc before we part forever. Where are you? Where? Are you in good health? . . . Lyovochka, my darling, do not hide from me, let me come to see you again. I won't disturb you, I give you my word of honor, I will be humble and gentle with you. All my children are here but they can do nothing to help me, they are so intolerant and so self-assured. There is only one thing I need—your love. . . . Farewell, Lyovochka, I am looking for you, calling for you every moment. . ."
But how was she to get her letter to him? She did not know where he was, although she suspected that lie had gone to Shamardino. Once more, she had no alternative but to turn to her children. They had just finished their discussion upstairs. It had been decided that Sasha, the only one who knew where their father was hiding, would go to him with the eternal Varvara Feokritova. How proud she was, with her weight)' secret locked inside her head. The envy of the others incited her to bccomc tyrannicaclass="underline" let the entire family grovel at her feet, she would not betray! She collected her brothers' and sister's and mother's letters and promised to place them in the fugitive's own hands. After reading them, he would decide what to do.
That night, Sasha packed her suitcase and left, cloakcd in mystery, with Varvara Fcokritova. The next morning, October 30, she reached Shamardino, went to the monastery and was received by her aunt Marya and cousin Elizabeth in the old nun's cell. Shortly afterward Tolstoy arrived, and froze in the doorway at the sight of his daughter.
"Well, what's going on back there?" he asked in a toneless voice.
She told him everything and handed him the letters; he read them, and his body seemed to shrivel up.
"Is it possible that you are sorry for what you did or that you think it's your fault if something should happen to Maman?" asked Sasha severely.
"No, of course not. Can a man feel remorse when it was impossible for him to act otherwise? But if anything were to happen to her, I should be very, very unhappy."7
Feeling him wavering, Sasha threatened him with visions of his wife coming after him in hot pursuit, the policc discovering his hiding place and hustling him ignominiously home. With the bullying authority of a nurse, she explained that he must not linger there, he must move on.
"Yes," he stammered, "I found an isba to rent. But I mustn't think of that now."
He was dejected and upset; his sister ordered tea for him and calmed him by saying:
"If Sonya comes here, I shall be the one to see her."
Late that evening Tolstoy went back to his room at the inn, opened the transom because he was too hot, asked to be left alone and began to write a long letter to Sonya in reply to the one he had received. Twice Sasha asked him to close the transom, but he refused:
"Leave me alone, I'm hot!"
The girl anxiously said to Varvara Feokritova:
"Papa looks as though he is already sorry he left."
He, however, was writing:
"A meeting, and still more my return, is now completely out of the question. For you, from what they tell 111c, it would be extremely harmful, and for me it would be terrible, for in view of your nervousness and excited state and morbid condition, matters would, if possible, become even worse than before. I urge you to make the best of what has come to pass, try to adjust to the new situation in which you have been temporarily placed and, above all, take care of yourself. I have spent two days at Shamardino and Optina, and I am now leaving. I am not telling you where I am going because I feel that separation is essential for you as well as for mc. Do not suppose that I went because I don't love you. I do love you and I pity you with all my soul, but I have no choice. . . . Farewell, dear Sonya, may God help you. . . . Perhaps the months that are left to us to live are more important than all the years before: we must live them well."