A few days after this incident Sonya caught cold and fell ill. Pneumonia. Like Lyovochka. Tanya, who was nursing her, asked: "Do you often think about Papa?"
"I never do anything else," she answered mildly. "1 have never stopped living by his side and I torment myself because I was not good. However, I was always faithful to him, body and soul. I was only eighteen years old when I married him and I never loved anyone else."7 Tier condition grew worse; the doctors held out little hope. Tanya wrote to Sergey, who was living in Moscow. Yasnaya Polyana was in a military zone, so he had to apply to the Kremlin for a pass. The paper was signed by V. Ulyanov (Lenin), head of the Soviet of People's Commissars. Sergey arrived in time to witness his mother's last minutes. She recognized him, blessed him and told him she wanted to be buried in the Church. Then, turning to Sasha, she murmured:
"Sasha, my darling, forgive me. I don't know what was going on inside me in those days."
"Forgive me, too," Sasha replied through her tears. "I have greatly wronged you."8
Sonva died, clear-headed and calm, after receiving extreme unction, 011 November 4, 1919, nine years after Leo Tolstoy. She was buried in the little Kochaky cemetery beside her daughter Masha. In digging the grave, the men unearthed some bones and the copper buttons of a uniform which, judging by the engraving on them, must have belonged to an officer in the days of Alexander I—one of those whose memory Lyovochka had immortalized in Weir and Peace.f
t After Countess Tolstoy's death, her sons and daughters soon scattered. Tanya, director of the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow from 1923 to 1925, emigrated to France and finally settled in Italy, where she died in 1050. Ilya emigrated to the United States, where he had a difficult life, worked in tne cinema (chiefly on the film of Resurrection) and died in 19^3. Leo, the tormented intellectual, traveled widely, lived in the United States, Italy and France and suffered until the end of his days (1945) from being the son of the great Tolstoy who could not write or accomplish anything that did not appear trifling in comparison with the work of his father. Michael lived in France until 193$, then .settled in Morocco, where he died in 1944. Andrey died in 1916 during the first World War. Sasha, Tolstoy's sole surviving child, made an unsuccessful attempt to carry on her father s teachings in the Yasnaya Polyana school. She came under suspicion by the Soviet regime and left Russia late in 1920, first emigrating to Japan and then settling in the United States. She is president of the Tolstoy Foundation, which cares for displaced persons; its funds are used to maintain a home for the aged, a church, school, library, etc. Sergey remained in the USSR, had one leg amputated after an accident and died in 1948. Together with Tanya, he contributed greatly to research into and publication of his father's work. Twenty-one grandchildren of Leo Tolstoy are now living in Europe and America, all of whom have children of their own.
Chertkov remained in the USSR, was associated with the publication of the Soviet Government edition of the Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy in ninety volumes, and died in 1956 at the age of seventy-six.
Appendices
Biographical Notes
Brief biographical notes on some of the people mentioned in this book are given below.
Aksakov, Ivan Sergeyevich (1823-86).
Slavophil publicist. Aksakov, Konstantin Sergeyevich (1817-60).
Slavophil publicist, brother of the above. Alexeyev, Vasily Ivanovich (1848-1919). Tutor of Leo Tolstoy's children from 1877 to 1881. Before that, he spent two years on a farming community in the United States. Alyokhin, Arkady Vasilyevich (1854-1918).
Disciple of Tolstoy; member of several Tolstoy colonies. Andreyev, Leonid Nikolayevich (1871-1919).
Author of tormented and morbid imagination, noted chiefly for The Abyss (1902), In the Fog (1902), The Red Laugh (1904), The Governor (1906), Darkness (1907), The Seven That Were Hanged (1908) and He Who Gets Slapped (1914). Andreyev-Burlak, Vasily Nikola yevich (1843-88). An actor.
Annenkov, Paul Vasilyevich (1812-87).
Literary and art critic; published the important Pushkin in the Reign of Alexander I in 1875, and some interesting literary reminiscences. Bartenyev, Peter Ivanovich (1829-1912).
Bibliographer, editor-in-chief of Russian Archives. Bibikov, Alexander Nikola yevich (1822-86).
Landowner in the government of Tula; Tolstoy's neighbor. Biryukov, Paul Ivanovich (1860-1931). Tolstoy's friend, secretary' and biographer; nicknamed "Posha" by the author's family. Botkin, Vasily Petrovich (1811-69).
Publicist and literary critic, partisan of "Art for art's sake" movement. Boulangfr, Pact. Alexandrovich (1865-1925). Tolstoy's friend and admirer; worked for the Moscow-Kursk Railroad Company.
Bulgakov, Valentin Fyodorovicu (1886 ). Employed as Tolstoy's secretary in 1910 (he was then 24). Wrote one book: Leo Tolstoy in the Last Year of I lis Life.
Bunin, Ivan Alex eye vicn (1870-1953). Author, fled to France in 1918; chiefly noted for The Village (1910), The Cup of Life (1914), Brothers (1914) and The Gentlemen from San Francisco (1915). Bunin won the Nobel Prize in 1933, the only Russian author to do so before Pasternak and Sholokhov.
Buturlin, Ai.bxander Sergeyevich (1845-1916). Revolutionary, knew Tolstoy from 1879 on.
Chaliapin, Fyodor IvANovicn (1873-1938).
Famous basso; his best-known roles were Boris Godunov, Mefistofele and Basilio.
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (1860-1904). Bom at Taganrog; his childhood was spent in poverty and misery. He grew up in tenor of a fanatical and brutal father, and followed his family when they moved to Moscow to escape their creditors. There, living in a slum, he somehow managed to continue his studies and entered the School of Medicine. To earn money, he began writing magazine stories, for which he was very badly paid. Received his medical degree in 1884, but his health was too poor to allow him to practice and he had to abandon all professional activity. However, thanks to Grigorovich and Suvorin, who had singled him out, his literary career looked promising. In 1888 he published his first important story, The Steppe, which was a success. It was followed by a series of charming, poignant stories of matchless sincerity: A Dreary Story (1889), The Duel (1891), Ward No. 6 (1892), An Anonymous Sfory (1893) fhe Black Monk (1894). His plays, The Sea Gullr Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya consolidated his reputation. But his increasingly poor health-he had tuberculosis-prevented him from fully enjoying his good fortune. In 1898 he fell in love with a young actress from the Moscow Art Theater, Olga Knipper, who had acted in The Sea Gull. They were married in 1901, and this marked the beginning of a difficult time for the couple—the wife bursting with vitality and ambition, the husband dying by inches. Olga Knipper continued to act in Moscow and Petersburg, while her husband, who had taken refuge in the Crimea, coughed blood; it was in this lonely and forsaken condition that he wrote The Cherry Orchard. The play was completed in October 1903 and the Moscow Art Theater production opened on January 17, 1904; it was a triumph, to the profound joy of the author. Six months later he died at Badenweiler, a little German spa where he had gone to rest.