The day after his "relapse," his brother Nicholas, sister Marya and brother-in-law Valerian Tolstoy arrived at Yasnaya Polyana. It was a momentous occasion for Leo. Nicholas had already tried several times to explain to his younger brother that the dissolute life he was leading in Moscow was a mistake and that none of the alternatives he proposed for getting himself out of his troubles was worthy of him. This time he repeated his arguments, more emphatically. According to him, of the three solutions advocated by Leo the first (gambling) was simply ridiculous, the second (a position in the administration) would be necessary—sincc he did not have a university degree—to complete a tedious two-year period of preparation in the provinces, and the thhd (a rich marriage) was distasteful in the present and perilous for the future. Since Lyovochka didn't seem to know what to do with his excess energy, why didn't he come to the Caucasus? The country was magnificent: hunting, long horse rides, fraternity of the bivouacs, skirmishes with the rebel mountain dwellers. ... As this captivating sccnc unfolded, Leo felt his enthusiasm rise. Why hadn't he thought of it before? To triumph over his bad habits, there was only one remedy: the Caucasus!
Aunt Toinette bravely accepted this new whim, hoping that Lyovochka would mend his ways under the influence of Nicholas. A small family council was held to discuss the best way of managing the young man's affairs during his absence. His brother-in-law Valerian volunteered to take care of the estate, applying the incomc, by priority, to the repayment of his debts. The traveler would simply have to tighten his belt a notch or two. He was already determined to do so. The harder it was, the better lie would like it.
Until the last minute, Aunt Toinette kept expecting another about- face. Once before, he had taken it into his head to follow Valerian when he was leaving for Siberia on business, and instantly had gone racing after the tarantas like a madman; then, noticing that he had come off without his hat, he turned back to the house and, suddenly deflated, began thinking of something else. . . . What if he forgot his hat again this time? But he forgot nothing. On April 29, 1851 the two brothers, one in civilian dress and the other in uniform, said their good-byes to the old lady, who tried not to cry as she blessed them, and jumped into the coach. Tragic barking resounded through the house until the horses moved off: Leo had locked up his dog Bulka to prevent him from following them. At the first relay, as he was climbing back into the tarantas, he saw a black ball rolling down the road—it was Bulka, without his brass collar. "lie came running like the wind and threw himself upon me, licked my hands, and then went to lie down in the shadow of the coach," Tolstoy wrote. "Afterward I learned he had pushed out the windowpancs, jumped out and, following my scent, covered the twelve miles at a dead nm in the suffocating heat."17 lie could not bring himself to send the dog back, so he settled him on his knees and they pursued their journey with an additional passenger, who had heaving flanks, a lolling tongue and blissful eyes.
As Nicholas had a month in which to rejoin his regiment, the two brothers made a detour by way of Moscow, where they spent two days visiting friends, going to restaurants, looking in on the gypsies in Sokolniki Park and playing in the gamblinghouses. The late-period Leo felt nothing but contempt for this debased world in which early-period Leo had experienced such potent joys. The singing girls with their medallions on their foreheads might flash their black eyes at him, glittering from the candle flames, to their hearts' content: he was made of stone. Immensely pleased with himself, he wrote to Aunt Toinette: "I went among the common people, in the gypsies' tents. You can easily imagine the struggle that I waged there with myself, for and against; but I emerged victorious—that is, having given nothing more than my blessing to the joyous descendants of the illustrious pharaohs."18
He confessed, however, that he had not been able to keep away from cards; and a good thing it was, too, for he won four hundred rubles. "I am afraid this may alarm you. You will think I am playing and am going to play again. Do not worry, this was just one exception I allowed myself."
Before they left, the two brothers had their photograph taken together in Mascr's studio. In the daguerreotype, which has been preserved, we see Leo Tolstoy seated, his hands crossed on the pommel of his stick, his neck shortened by a badly knotted tie, with stiff hair, Staring eyes, a rough, peasant face, and the shadow of a mustache above his upper lip; Nicholas has a sickly, triangular face with a mild expression, a lock of hair across his forehead, his shoulders artificially broadened by epaulettes, and seven brass buttons down his hollow chest. In spite of his uniform, he is the less martial looking of the two.
The departure from Moscow probably took place at dawn after a farewell "stag" supper, noisy and hearty, like the one Tolstoy described in The Cossacks. The coach awaiting him was a common tarantas, made at Yasnaya Polyana. The box of this chariot rested on eight long, flexible wooden poles, intended to serve as shock-absorbers. The front and rear wheels were set far enough apart to allow some play in the poles. The volume of piled-up baggage determined the amount of space left to the passengers. The whole badly-balanced contraption creaked at the slightest bump. Tn case of breakdown, vehicles of this type were repaired with an ax: there was always wood to cut along the side of the road. They went through a poor, dingy part of the city which Tolstoy had never seen. "It seemed to him that only people setting out on journeys ever went down these streets," he wrote of his hero Olcnin. And, further on, "Olcnin was a young man who had never completed his studies anywhere, had no job ... had run through half his fortune and, at twenty-four, had not yet chosen a career and had never done a thing. He was what was known as a 'young gentleman' in the high society of Moscow. . . . Now his imagination was turned to the future, to the Caucasus. His dreams were colored by visions of Amalat- Beks, Circassian women, mountains and gorges, terrifying torrents, and danger."19
On their way, the two brothers stopped to spend a week in Kazan with their aunt Pelagya Yushkov. Leo Tolstoy found a childhood friend in town, Zinaida Molostvov, whom he had thought he was in love with in his university days. Seeing her again, he was not disappointed. She was not pretty, but she was lively, mischievous, witty. Iler shining eyes overwhelmed him. He danced with her, went walking with her shoulder-to-shoulder, but never spoke of love; he wanted to carry this tender, pure memory away with him on his trip, to muse over nostalgically, lulled by the lurching coach and jingling bells. A few days later he wrote in his diary, "Do you remember, Zina, the little sidepath in the Archbishop's Garden? I nearly said it then, and so did you! It was for me to speak first. But do you know why, I think, I didn't? I was so happy that I wanted nothing more. I was afraid to spoil my happiness, or rather ours. . . . Those delicious moments will remain among the finest memories of my life."
From Kazan the Tolstoy brothers went, still by tarantas, to Saratov, where they loaded the coach onto a flatboat, hired a pilot and two oarsmen and abandoned themselves and their baggage to the current. The trip from Saratov to Astrakhan took three weeks, during which Tolstoy was deeply affected by the horizontal placidity of the banks, the silence of floating, the changing intensity of the sky reflected in the water. The Volga was swollen by the spring thaws and had overflowed her banks. The mornings were chilly, the sun swam slowly up out of the fog. Now and then they passed a heavy barge towed by ragged, singing boatmen; or a steamboat, churning the water with its flashing paddle wheel and blowing gray smoke, soon dissipated by the wind, up to the sky. Here and there white sails glided by with seraphic ease, and then along came a forester's raft with a wooden cabin built on a platform of rough-hewn tree trunks. At twilight the nightingales all began to sing at once, and did not stop, even when men came near. The boat was tied up and they spent the night ashore, and at dawn the crew returned to their oars. Leo strolled back and forth on the deck, read, argued with his brother and grew to like him better. "Nicholas finds me a very pleasant traveling companion, except for my cleanliness; it makes him angry, as he says, to see mc change my shirt a dozen times a day," he wrote to Aunt Toinette. "I find him, too, a very pleasant traveling companion, if only he weren't so dirty."20