After a few days of heroic self-denial, he again asked Epishka to arrange a rendezvous for him. But these venal affairs, soon begun and sooner ended, could not satisfy him. He was longing for a real passion, exotic, romantic, with some native woman. And he found it, with the haughty Maryanka—who became the Maryanka of The Cossacks. "She was not pretty, she was beautiful. Her features might have seemed almost masculine and coarse, had it not been for her tall, well- proportioned figure, her powerful chest and shoulders, and above all the expression, tender and severe at once, of her wide black eyes, ringed by dark shadows, beneath black brows. She radiated virginal strength and health."-6 When he watched her at work, shovel in hand, shivers of desire ran through him. Hoping to approach her, he made friends with her father. He even contemplated marriage. After all, would it not be wiser to forsake the artificial allures of civilization and discover the true meaning of life with a woman whose mind had not been contaminated by the West? "Perhaps it is nature I love in her, the expression of even-thing beautiful in nature," said his alter ego Olenin in The Cossaclis. "Loving her, I feci myself an indivisible part of the good
Lord's whole happy universe." And, "The instant I imagine those drawing rooms, those women with their pommaded hair held up by artificial curls, those unnatural mouths, weak, camouflaged, deformed limbs, and that sophisticated babble that is mistakenly thought to be conversation, in the place of my little hut, my woods and my love, I am overcome with revulsion." How far did Tolstoy go in his intimacy with the young Cossack girl? His diary docs not tell. It is likely, after a few nocturnal walks, a few bashful kisses, a few vows exchanged, half in Russian and half in Tatar, that he realized it was all an invention on his part. "Ah, if only I could become a Cossack," sighed Olenin- alias-Tolstoy, "steal horses, get drunk on chikhir, sing songs, kill people and, dead drunk, go climbing in at her window and spend the night without asking myself who or why I am—then it would be different, then she and I could understand each other, then I could be happy."27 In any event, he had got hold of a first-class subject for a novel! The mad passions of his characters would console him for his own exemplary conduct; there was nothing to equal therapy-by-writing. But he would think about the Cossacks later; first, he had to get on with his Childhood, a mixture of fiction and fact. To put himself in the mood, Tolstoy talked to his brother about their early years at Yasnaya Polyana and in Moscow. Although Nicholas had become an inveterate drinker, he was still an authority to his younger brother, even on literature. With Nicholas' help, he was sure of success. But he lacked paticncc. lie was continually torn from his worktablc by some welcome distraction. After Stary Yurt, he returned to cards with a vengeance. He had not finished paying Lieutenant Knoring when he suffered fresh losses; he was borrowing from his right hand to pay back his left, and he began waking up in the middle of the night to go over his accounts. Each time, he sat down to play in the hope that a lucky run would put him back on his feet. During one of these heartbreaking evenings, he befriended a young Chcchcnian, Sado, who lived in the Russian-controlled neighboring aoul and often came to the camp to play with the officers.
"His father," Tolstoy wrote to Aunt Toinette, "is quite a rich man, but he has buried all his money and won't give his son a cent. To get money, the son goes over to steal horses and cattle from the enemy; sometimes he risks his life twenty times to steal something that isn't worth ten rubles; but he does it for glory, not because he covets the things he steals. The biggest thief is respected here, and called a dzhigit, or brave. Some days Sado has a thousand silver rubles on him, others not a kopeck."28
As Sado did not know how to count, his opponents at cards fleeced him unmercifully. Tolstoy rebuked them heatedly and took the young man under his wing, in return for which Sado, wild with gratitude, offered to be his kunak, that is, his lifc-and-death friend. According to Caucasian tradition, if your kutiak asks you for your money, your horse, your weapon or your wife, you cannot refuse him, just as he must give you anything you fancy in his house. The two young men exchanged gifts to seal this precious bond of companionship. Sado gave Tolstoy a purse, a silver bridle, an oriental saber worth a hundred rubles and, a little later, a horse. Tolstoy, less liberal, responded with an old gun, bought for eight rubles long before, and a watch. The fact was that his circumstances were at their most straitened during this period. The five hundred-ruble IOU he had given Lieutenant Knoring fell due in January 1852: the fateful day was drawing near and he saw no possibility of meeting his obligation. As a last resort, he tried to interest God in his case. "When 1 said my prayers this evening," he wrote to Aunt Toinette, "I prayed to God very fervently to get me out of this unpleasant situation. 'But how can I get out of it?' I thought as I went to bed. 'Nothing can happen that will enable me to pay this debt.' I was already imagining all the unpleasantness I would have to suffer 011 account of it: he [Knoring] would lodge a complaint, my superiors would demand an explanation, why don't I pay up, etc. 'Help me, Lord!' I said as I fell asleep."20
And the miracle occurred. While Tolstoy was fretting, alone and insolvent by the light of his candle, Sado was playing cards with some officers at Stary Yurt and winning back from Knoring the IOU signed by his kunak. The next day he brought it to Nicholas Tolstoy, who was also at Stary Yurt on a mission, and said to him, "What do you think of that? Will your brother be pleased that I did it?" When he received Nicholas' letter announcing the good news, Tolstoy was struck dumb with gratitude. He looked at the torn IOU in the envelope and did not know whether to thank God or Sado for this last-minute reprieve. "Isn't it astonishing to sec one's wish granted the very next day?" he wrote to Aunt Toinette. " J hat is, the only astonishing thing is the existence of divine mercy for a being who has deserved it as little as I. And isn't Sado's devotion wonderful?"30
He instmcted Aunt Toinette to buy a pistol, six bullets and a little music box for Sado in Tula, "if it doesn't cost too much." Singular concern for economy in a man just rescued from a truly serious predicament! When he received the presents, he found them so much to his liking that he could hardly bear to part with them. The music box in particular charmed him with its melancholy ritornello: "I am sorry to send it to Sado. Nonsense. Off it goes!"31
It was making Tolstoy increasingly uncomfortable to be a civilian among soldiers—a little as though he were refusing to help his hosts with their housework. He did not fancy himself in the role of a parasite. Still less that of a cad. "Prince Baryatinsky thinks very highly of you," said his brother. "I think you have made a good impression on him and he would like to have you as a recruit." 'lhe promise of such lofty backing removed Tolstoy's last doubts. He wrote to Tula for the necessary papers to enlist and set off with his brother for Tiflis, where he could take the induction examination. He became ecstatic as they traveled along the Georgian military road through the Caucasus. Rock cliffs hung out over the roadway, the strangled Terek roared below at the bottom of the gorge, eagles sheared through the narrow strip of sky above their heads, there were glimpses of snowy peaks and clinging villages, the stone was coo], the native arbas creaked, everything spoke of freedom, endless space and wildness.