"November 7. Astapovo. Leo Nikolaycvich died at six this morning. 1 was not allowed in until his last breath. I was not allowed to say good-bye to my husband. Cruel people."
She returned to his side, sat down by the bed and did not leave him again all day. At eight thirty the doors of the stationmaster's house were opened to the crowd. Friends, acquaintances, railroad employees, journalists, peasants and factory workers filed past the body with its folded hands. Not one icon in the room, not one crucifix. A kerosene lamp cast a dim light on the peaceful features of Tolstoy and 011 Sonya's face, red-eyed, her chin quivering, her lips distorted by a tic.
Parfcny, the bishop of Tula, who had taken the train the night before, reached Astapovo at eight thirty that morning and was exceed ingly vexed to learn that the author was already dead. Losing no time, he convened the members of the family one by one to ask them if there had been anything in the attitude of the deceased to indicate that he- might have wished for a religious burial. All answered no. Andrey Tol stoy even told the bishop:
"Monsignor, I am a practicing Orthodox and I would have liked to sec my father reconciled with the Church, but I cannot lie."
Thereupon the deputy director of the police sent a coded telegram to the undersecretary of state of the interior: "The mission of His Excellency Parfcny was not succcssful; no member of the family was able to affirm that the dying man expressed a desire to return to the Church."
Father Varsonofy, fearing criticism from his superiors, had a certificate signed for him by the governor of Ryazan:
"In spite of his pressing requests to the members of the family of Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy and the physicians attending him, Father Varsonofy was not allowed to sec Count Tolstoy and the deceased was not even informed of his presence during the two days he- was in Astapovo."
After this, the frustrated clerics withdrew, but not before reminding Father Nicholas Gratsyansky, the local priest, that it was forbidden to say a mass for Tolstoy's soul. There remained the police. They observed the reactions of the crowd filing past the body of the enemy of autocracy, whose numbers increased as the news spread through the
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countryside. The railway employees decorated the bed with juniper boughs and placed the first funeral wreath, bearing the inscription: "To the apostle of love." The second, made of paper flowers cut out by children, was laid at the foot of the deathbed by the granddaughter of the poet Delvig: "To our glorious grandfather, from his young admirers," read the band. Muzhiks from neighboring villages pushed forward, mingling with schoolchildren. A peasant woman said to her son: "Remember him, he lived for us."
Women sobbed, prostrating and crossing themselves, strangers kissed the hands of the champion of the underdog, the hands that would never move again. It was as though the dead man's family had grown to embrace all the humble of Russia. Toward noon, they spontaneously began to sing the funeral chant, "Eternal Memory." If the Church refused to say a mass for the dead man, then the people would say one for him in their own way. Beneath the low ceiling of the little room, their rough, untaught voices rang out, commending unto God the soul of his servant Leo. The police 011 duty in the next room, who had been instructed to see that the decree of the Holy Synod was obeyed, could not tolerate such a manifestation of piety, and rushed in with their swords at their sides, shouting: "Enough of that singing!"
Everyone fell silent, but soon a few voices timidly resumed the chant, and continued until the police returned a second time.15
On the whole, however, the authorities were not displeased. At one o'clock in the afternoon the captain of the police telegraphed—in code —to his headquarters:
"By authorization of the governor of the province of Ryazan the placing of wTeaths has been permitted, but without provocative inscriptions that might incite demonstrations. There arc no signs of an attempt to make use of the event for reprehensible purposes. The strength of the detachment has been increased. Order has been established outside. All measures have been taken to ensure the rapid transfer of the body in order to avoid too great an influx of spectators."
A medical student injected formaldehyde into the dead man's veins, the sculptor Merkurov modeled his death mask, and a painter, Pasternak, who had conic from Moscow with his son Boris,™ set up his easel near the bed, but the crowd was continually in his way. Impossible to paint under such conditions; he simply made a sketch. Then a railroad worker drew a circle on the wall around the shadow of Tolstoy's profile, and journalists and onlookers photographed him from every angle and in every light, and he was laid on the bier. All day and all night the telegraph rattled non-stop, bringing expres-
sions of sympathy for the Tolstoy family from all over the world. In twenty-four hours the weary operators recorded eight thousand words.
On November 8, four of Tolstoy's sons—Sergey, Ilya, Andrey and Michael—carried the plain dark-vcllow coffin, bearing no cross or ornamentation, out of the house and placed it in a freight car on a pedestal covered with black cloth. Photographers pushed and shoved to get as many shots as they could, and cameramen cranked away feverishly. The interior of the car was decorated with shocks of straw and pine boughs. It was hooked onto the first-class car in which Sonya and her family- had been living. Another car containing twenty-five press correspondents wound up the convoy. At one fifteen in the afternoon, the funeral train pulled out of Astapovo and headed for Kozlov-Zasycka. Tolstoy himself had said where he wanted to be buried: at Yasnaya Polyana, on the edge of the ravine in Zakaz forest where his brother Nikolenka used to say the secret of universal love lay buried, engraved on a little green stick.
At the last moment, the ministry of the interior forbade the departure of special trains for Yasnaya Polyana, the Holy Synod refused to allow the celebration of religious services in memory of the infidel, the police were given orders to keep an eye on flower shops selling funeral wreaths* to prevent the inscription of any revolutionary sentiments on the bands, the troops quartered in the major cities were told to stand by, newspaper censorship doubled overnight; and nevertheless, all Russia communed in mourning. Edged in black, the writer's portrait spread across the front page of every newspaper; a few theaters closcd. St. Petersburg University declared a holiday and the tsar in person, the Duma and the Imperial Council sent telegrams of sympathy to the family. There were strikes, too, and student demonstrations, quelled by the army—a whole sea of agitation surging about a withered old man nailed inside a box, rolling along behind a freight car.
At six thirty in the morning of November 9, 1910, the train steamed slowly into the station at Zasyeka. There was a large crowd on the platform and around the station: peasants from Yasnaya Polyana and the neighborhood of Tula, students who had made a special trip from Moscow, delegations of all sorts, intimate friends and unknown followers. When the car doors opened, every head was bared ancl the crowd broke into "Eternal Memory." Oncc again the four sons lifted the oak coffin. The procession set out down the main road Tolstoy had so often traveled with his rapid stride. It was gray and cold, patches of snow lay here and there on the brown earth.
Two muzhiks walked at the head of the procession, waving a banner:
"Dear Leo Nikolayevich, the memory of your goodness will not die among us, the orphaned peasants of Yasnaya Polyana." Behind them came the coffin, the bearers taking turns carrying it, then wagons heaped high with wreaths, then a murmuring cohort of three or four thousand people, teams of horses, police in plain clothes, 'l hey passed between the two entrance towers. Police were patrolling the grounds. The number of photographers increased as they nearcd the house.