He still hoped against hope that Tolstoy's guardians, touched by grace, would make some last-minute concession. The archbishop of Ryazan, less optimistic, reminded local clergy that the miscreant was not entitled to religious burial or services. Other prelates sent messages attempting to persuade the dying man, but they were not given to him.
On November 6, Drs. Usov and Shurovsky arrived at the behest of Tolstoy's children. The number of doctors around him increased in proportion as their ability to save him declined. Now there were six of them: Usov, Shurovsky, Nikitin, Berkenheim, Semenovsky, Makovitsky. With this new detachment of important personages, the station- master decided to abandon his entire house to the "gentlemen," and moved himself and his family into the switchman's cabin. Tolstoy's temperature was only 99.2, but he was so weak that all hope seemed lost. Tanya and Sasha never left his bedside. He said to Tanya: "So this is the end! . . . And it's nothing. . . ,"13 Then, when Sasha moved to arrange his pillows, he half-rose and said in a firm voice:
"I advise you to remember this: there are many people on earth besides Ixo Nikolaycvich and you are taking care of no one but him."14
He sank back and his head dropped, exhausted by his effort. His nose and hands turned blue. They thought the end had come. Sonya and her sons were already gathering outside the red cottage. But the doctors gave him an injection of camphor oil and oxygen to inhale, and once more the three brothers and their mother were thrust back into their railroad car. After twenty minutes Tolstoy regained consciousness. He struggled and moaned. Bending over him, Sergey heard him murmur: "Ah, what a bother! . . . Let me go away somewhere . . . where nobody can find me. . . . Leave me alone! . . ." Suddenly he shouted, tough and crude as an angry peasant: "Clear out! ... Got to clear out!"
Toward evening he had another attack of hiccups. Sixty a minute. With ever>' jerk his old body shook from head to heel. He wanted to sit up at the side of the bed in order to get his breath, but he couldn't move his limbs. A shot of morphine calmed him.
Learning that the patient's condition was hopeless, hope returned to Father Varsonofy. He asked to sec Sasha, whose youth, he thought, should betoken sensitivity. She sent back a laconic note, virtually a refusaclass="underline"
"I cannot leave my father now, he may need me at any moment. I can add nothing to what our whole family has told you. We have all decided, regardless of any other considerations, to respect my father's will and desires, whatever they may be."
Tolstoy had clcarly stated his will and desires in his private diary, on January- 22, 1909: "1 could no more return to the Church and take communion on my deathbed than I could use profanity or look at obscene pictures on my deathbed."
But he had also written in the same diary on November 29, 1901, when he was critically ill at Gaspra:
"When I am dying I should like to be asked whether I still sec life as l>efore, as a progression toward God, an increase of love. If I should not have the strength to speak, and the answer is yes, I shall close my eyes; if it is no, I shall look up."
Although everyone present had read and reread his diary, no one thought of asking him the question. For the Tolstoyans, it was essential that Leo Tolstoy should not deny his creation in a moment of weakness. The monk sent a letter to Sasha in reply to her note, in which he cunningly alluded to a vow which the dying man had allegedly7 made but was virtually unverifiable:
"You know that the count had told his own sister, your aunt, who is a nun, that he wished to see us and talk to us for the peace of his soul, and that he deeply regretted that his wish could not be satisfied. I therefore respectfully beg you, countess, not to refuse to inform the count of my presence in Astapovo; if he wishes to see me, if only for two or three minutes, I shall hasten to his side. If the count's answer should be negative I shall return to Optina-Pustyn and allow God's will to be done."
Sasha did not think of answering. Her father was dying. The old man's bony hands were crawling across the blanket, climbing up to his chest, parting invisible veils. The blue spots had come back to his ears, lips and nails. At ten in the evening he began to choke: "I can hardly breathe," he said.
The doctors gave him more oxygen and dccidcd to inject camphor oil to reactivate his heart. He muttered:
"This is all foolishness! . . . What's the point of taking medicine? . . ."
But he felt better after the injection, and called for Sergey. When his son was by his side, he opened his eyes wide and, his facc contorted by the importance of what he was about to say, he feebly uttered: "The truth ... I care a great deal . . . How they . . ." Those were his last words. He dozed off, relaxed, relieved. It looked like a turn for the better. The room was plunged in darkness. A single candle burned 011 the night table. An occasional murmur of voices, a sigh, a creaking of springs camc from the next room, which was full of people. The glass door opened, a doctor entered on tiptoe, approached
the patient, listened to his labored breathing and went out again shaking his head. The minutes dragged on, weighted down with silence and the night. Sasha was exhausted, she undressed and went to lie down on a couch, while Sergey and Chertkov took turns sitting up.
They woke her a little after midnight. The end was coming. He was thrashing about and mouthing noises, unable to articulate. At two in the morning his pulse grew still feebler, he began to rasp and pant. Lying on his back, with his eyes closed, he seemed to be wrestling with some knotty problem. After consulting the other doctors, Dr. Usov suggested that Sasha might call in her mother. This time neither the girl nor Chertkov had any objections to make: they did not think he would recognize his wife.
Leaning on her sons, Sonya left her railroad air and hurried through the darkness toward the red cottage with the dim light shining in its windows. She stopped short, swaying, in the doorway of the room, not daring to go near her husband in front of all these people who hated her. From the doonvay she looked at the skeletal little old man with the cavernous checks and white beard, who was all the love of her life. At last she made up her mind and walked straight up to the l)ed, kissed her Lyovochka on the forehead, kneeled and said, "Forgive me, forgive me." But he did not hear. He was suffocating. She went 011 talking to him in a low voice, incoherently, mixing together her vows and words of tenderness and reproof. She was beginning to lose control of herself and the doctors asked her to go into the next room.
Despite renewed injections of camphor oil, 'lolstoy did not regain consciousness. But when a lighted candle was held up to his face, he frowned. Dr. Makovitsky called out in a loud voice:
"Leo Nikolayevich!"
His eyes opened onto a glassy stare. The doctor held out a glass of water tinged with red wine. He docilely swallowed a mouthful. It was five in the morning. Shortly afterward, he stopped breathing. A long silence.
"First stop," said Dr. Usov.
The breathing began again, whistling, irregular. There was a death rattle. Everyone in the house was there, around the bed. Sonya knelt down in front of her husband and began reciting prayers. How he battled against death! After every breath she waited in agony for the next one. Suddenly a great calm spread through the room. Dr. Makovitsky leaned over and gently closed Leo Tolstoy's eyes. It was five minutes past six in the morning.
Sergey and Dr. Makovitsky undressed the dead man, washed him and put on the coarse white linen blouse he always wore, gray trousers,
woolen stockings and slippers. Another telegram, among the hundreds, went out from the Astapovo station: "Order coffin polished oak 2 arshins and 9 vershoks,* with zinc casing." Sonya, meanwhile, back in her railroad car, wrote in her diary.