He arrived in Tiflis only to be told by General Brimmer that the papers from Tula were insufficient; to complete his file, he needed a certificate from the governor of the province stating that he was no longer a civil servant. Disappointed, he decided to wait for the document there and, letting his brother return to Starogladkovskaya alone, lie rented a room in a modest house in the suburbs—the favorite haunt of the German colony,32 among the vineyards and gardens on the left bank of the Kura.
South of the German settlement, on the same side of the river, the native quarter spread along the mountainside: steep narrow streets, houses with overhanging balconies, a languid sibilant throng in which veiled Moslem women brushed against Persians with scarlet-painted fingernails and high hairdresses, Tatar mollahs in loose gowns and green or white turbans, hillsmen from the conquered trilics wearing Cherkesska belted at the waist. The hieratic camels' heads swayed above the crowd. It was hot, even in November. The air smelled of dirt, honey, incense and leather. On the right bank of the Kura lay the Russian town, clean, neat and administrative, exhaling the tedium of a provincial capital beneath the sun. Occasionally Tolstoy would go to the theater or the Italian opera, but he immediately regretted the few rubles he had spent on his ticket. His disposition was sour for two reasons: he was short of money and he was ill—which of the Cossack girls at the stanitsa had left him this searing remembrance of a night of love? Furious, he began a three-week coursc of treatment. "My illness has cost me dear enough," he wrote to his brother Nicholas. "Druggist: twenty rubles; twenty visits to the doctor; and now cotton wadding and the cab every day are costing me another one hundred and twenty. I am telling you all these details so you will send me as much money as you can in a hurry. . . . The venereal infection has been cured, but the after-effects of the mercury are painful beyond belief.33 'llie inside of my mouth and tongue arc covered with sores. Without exaggerating, I am now in my second week without eating or sleeping for a single full hour." Five days later he also dcscril)cd his condition to Aunt Toinette; but this time, out of consideration for the old spinster, his pen transformed the venereal disease into "a kind of high fever that has kept me in bed for three weeks."34
This period of forccd inactivity was bcneficial. Far from his world of the present, he plunged voluptuously back into the story of his childhood. "Do you remember, dear Aunt," he wrote to Aunt Toinette, "a piece of advice you gave me long ago: to write novels? Well, I am taking your advice and literature has now become my occupation. I do not know whether what I write will ever appear publicly but it is something I very much enjoy doing, and have kept at it too long now to abandon it."*5
As his health improved, he began going out more often, met a few friends, played billiards—losing more than a thousand games to a master marksman36—and hunted with fervor: "The hunting here is magnificent," he wrote to his brother Sergey on December 23, 1851. "Open country, little swamps full of gray hare, islets covered with bulrushes instead of trees, where the foxes are hiding. I have gone out nine times in all, at a distance of eight to ten miles from the Cossack village, with two dogs, one first-rate and the other worthless; I have bagged two foxes and sixty or so hares. When I come back here I shall have a go at deer-hunting 011 horseback." And he added casually, "If you want to impress everyone with the latest news from the Caucasus, you can tell them that the most important person around after Shamil, one Hadji Murad—has just surrendered to the Russian government.37 The boldest (a dzhigit) and bravest man in all Chechenya has committed an act of cowardice."
'I"he official papers were long in coming and Tolstoy chafed at being forccd to continue wearing civilian clothes—an overcoat from Sharmer and a ten-ruble top hat—when every fiber of his body had already been militarized. It was all he could do to keep from saluting when he saw a general pass. To humor his impatience, the commanding officer at the recruitment center agreed to give him a provisional assignment that would become final upon receipt of the exeat from the governor of Tula. Tolstoy was attached to the 20th Artillery Brigade, 4th battery (his brother's). A mock examination, held on January 3, 1852, entitled him to the rank of cadet or junker. Donning his uniform, he felt curiously happy "not to be free any more." Ilis erratic behavior and unstable nature may at last have been beginning to alarm even himself. The only salvation he could see lay in discipline, imposed by superior officers, and in the gift of his person to the army, to help annihilate "the cunning pillagers and rebel Asiatics."38 On the way to Starogladkovskaya he stopped at the Mozdok post station, where he was suddenly seized by doubt. Ilad he been right to choose the military carccr? From the posthousc he wrote to Aunt Toinette:
"A year ago I thought that entertainment and gadding about were my only sources of happiness; now, on the contrary, serenity, both physical and mental, is what I long for."39 To be sure, he admitted that his unmotivated jaunt to the Caucasus had probably been inspired by God and that everything that happened to him there would accordingly be for the good of his soul, but he still believed he would return to Yasnava Polyana one day to satisfy his true destiny, as a peace-loving man with a full quota of family, learning and virtue. Curious cadet, this, who longs to resign from his post the moment he receives it, and immediately begins expounding the joys of carpet- slippered retirement to his aunt, in the following terms:
"After an indefinite number of years, neither old nor young, I am at Yasnava—my affairs are in order, I have no worries or problems; you arc living at Yasnava too. You have grown a little older but you are still active and well. We live the life we lived before, I work in the morning but we sec cach other almost all day long: wc have dinner, I read something amusing to you in the evening, and then we talk. I tell you about my life in the Caucasus and you tell me your memories—of my father and mother—you tell me the 'terrible tales' we used to listen to with frightened eyes and mouth agape. . . . We will have no social life—nobody will come to bother us or gossip to us. A beautiful dream; but I let my dreams go farther than that. I am married— my wife is a gentle, good, loving person, she loves you as I do. We have children who call you 'Grandmaman.' You live in the big house. The whole house is the way it was when Papa was alive, and we begin the same life over again, only the parts are changed; you play Crand- mothcr's part, but you arc even better than she; I play Papa's part, although I despair of ever being worthy of it; my wife plays the part of Ma man and the children ours. Marya plays the two aunts, without their miseries. Even Gasha will take the part of Prascovya Isayevna. But one person will be missing, to play the part you did in our family. There will never be another soul as fine and loving as yours. You will have no successor. There will be three new characters who will make an occasional appearance on the scene—the brothers; and one in particular will often be with us: Nicholas. An elderly bachelor, baldt retired from the army, still as fine and noble as ever. I picture to myself how he will tell the children stories lie will make up as he used to do, how the children will kiss his filthy hands (which deserve to be covered with kisses), how he will play with them, how my wife will cook his favorite dishes for him, how we will all talk over our memories together, how you will sit in your usual place and he happy listening to us, how you will call us, the old ones, Lyovochka and Nikolcnka,0 as always, and how you will scold us—I because I eat with my hands and he because he hasn't washed his. . . . All of this could happen, and hope is so sweet a thing. Here I am crying again. Why do I cry when I think of yon? These arc tears of happiness. I am happy to know how to love vou."40