The person writing these lines in the posthousc at Mozdok, with moist eyes and a heart aching with tenderness, was the same little boy who, when punished by Prosper de St. Thomas, invented a heroic future to console himself for being locked up in the dark closet; the virgin student of Kazan, too timid to talk to the girls, living on prodigious fairytales of love with HER, the ideal woman; the Moscow playboy going off to the Caucasus to massacre the hillsmen, seduce a Circassian slave and teach her to read French in Notre-Dame de Paris:41 the same eternally galloping imagination, the serpentine embroidery of every thought, the need to embellish the future in order to compensate for the present. The fact that he was in the process of writing his childhood memories made him doubly vulnerable to nostalgia for the past. The more he thought of the scenery and people that had witnessed his first years, the more sorely he needed to see them.
On January 14, 1852, however, what he saw was not Yasnaya Polyana, but the Starogladkovskaya stanitsa with its white houses on stilts, watchtower, shops, laughing girls and easy-going Cossacks. . . . Alas! his brother Nicholas was already on the march. He set off to join him at once, and spent the entire month of February 1S52 in marches, countermarches and skirmishes. "I am indifferent to life: it has given me too little joy for me to love it; therefore I am not afraid of death," lie wrote in his diary on February 5, 1S52. "Nor am I afraid of pain. What I am afraid of is not being able to bear pain and death with dignity." Nearly every day they traded fire with sharpshooters perched in the rocks or buried in the depths of the forest. On February 17, in the capture of the Kozmy, Lyachi and Indy aouls, and 011 February 18 in the attack 011 the Chcchenian positions on the banks of the Michik River, cadet
• Diminutives of Leo and Nicholas.
Tolstoy bore himself with composure. An enemy ball tore of! one wheel of the cannon he was serving; another killed a horse two feet away from him. As the enemy's aim was becoming increasingly accurate, Nicholas, who commanded the battery, ordered it to retreat and continue firing. The exhausted soldiers had to thread their way between detachments of hillsmen who picked them off as they went. "The fear I experienced at that moment was the greatest I have ever known," Tolstoy said years later, in 1900. "At last wc came to the Cossack camp. For supper, in the open, there was a roasted kid, the most succulent I have ever eaten. We all slept in the same cabin, eight men side by side. But the air was delicious . . . like the kid!"42 The next morning, thinking back over his behavior, Tolstoy's judgment was severe. "Danger opened my eyes," he wrote in his diary on February 28, 1852. "I wanted to believe that 1 was perfectly calm and in command of myself. But the engagements of the seventeenth and eighteenth did not confirm this." Dissatisfied with himself, he was nevertheless furious to learn that his superiors, who wanted to nominate him for the St. George Cross, had been forced to remove his name from the list for the idiotic reason that he was still not officially in the ariny. That confoundcd exeat that wouldn't comc! What were they doing in their offices back home? lie would complain to Aunt Toinette: "1 frankly confess that this one little cross is the only one of all the military honors I was vain enough to desire and this incident has infuriated mc beyond words, especially as there is only one opportunity to receive it and now I've lost my chance."'3
Back at Starogladkovskaya, he began to neglcct the army more and more. "Marching and all this cannon practice are not much fun, especially because they upset the regularity of my life."44 His comradcs found him haughty and distant. Often, instead of joining in their discussions, he ostentatiously read a book or stared off into space. He confided to his aunt that "The education, feelings and attitudes of those I meet here are too different from mine for me to enjoy their company. Nicholas alone has the gift, despite the enormous differences between him and all these men, of amusing himself with them and being loved by all. I envy him this gift, but I know I cannot do the same."43 More than anything, Tolstoy suffered from having to follow the orders of the red-haired Alcxcyev, whom he judged to be a pretentious, loudmouthed fool. The lieutenant-colonel set great store by his prerogatives, and vowed to bring the new cadet to heel. It was a tradition that the officers dined at their commanding officer's table. During meals, Tolstoy displayed a disrespectful degree of boredom, did not laugh at his host's jokes and left as soon as dessert was over.
Alcxeycv finally stopped inviting him. "I no longer dine or have supper at Alexeyev's." (Diary, March 30, 1852.) "Alexeyev is such a bore that I shall never set foot in his place again." (April 5, 1852.) "Received a rude and stupid note from Alexeyev in reference to my absence from drill. He is absolutely determined to prove that he can make trouble for me." (April 8, 1852.) "Saw Alexeyev's conceited face at drill and was unable to keep back a smile." (April 11, 1852.) One day, however, dropping in at Alexeyev's, he was overcome with humiliation to sec his brother sprawled out, dead drunk, by the tabic. "It is a shame he does not realize how it pains me to see him drunk. . . . The worst part of it for me is that people who are inferior to him judge him and pity him." (March 31, 1852.)
Once sobered up, however, this scrawny, balding brother with the teasing eye and dirty hands was the most delightful of companions. Leo read him everything he wrote. Childhood, his novel, was giving him trouble. He crossed out, wrote over, started again, and meditated on the difficult profession of author. "My brother came," he wrote in his diary on March 27, 1852. "1 read him what 1 had written at Tiflis. He thinks it is not as good as the rest and I think it is no good at all. . . ." "Definitely, I am convinced it is worthless. The style is too loose and there are too few ideas to make up for the shallowness of the rest." (April 7.) "It is an odd thing, but reading bad books helps me to dctcct my own faults more than good ones. Cood books reduce me to despair." (April 1, 1852.)
The creative trials and tribulations of the beginner were intensified by the state of his health, which was far from good. Rheumatism, sore throat, toothache, enteritis, mysterious spells of weakness . . . After consulting a physician at Kizlvar and taking a cruise around the Caspian, he returned to Starogladkovskaya and applied for leave to undergo treatment in a neighboring spa, preferably Pyatigorsk. Alexeyev, who did not bear grudges, gave him permission to go and even advanced him some money for the trip.
On May 16, Tolstoy arrived, worn out, at Pyatigorsk, found lodgings outside the town in a house with a view of the snowy peak of Elbrus, and began treatment immediately. Rising at dawn, he took long sulphur baths, drank thermal water until it nauseated him, ate Turkish delight, slept in the afternoon and observed no improvement in his condition. The distractions offered by the little city, which was famous for its pure air, tidy little houses and magnificent setting, did not tempt him: walks along the boulevards to the music of the orchestra, elegant chit-chat in the pastry shops, theatrical performances, fashion competitions between officers on furlough and wealthy civilians, the coquetry of ladies with too much time on their hands, intrigues, weddings, duels, picnics and cavalcades—to him it all seemed a ridiculous parody of "la vie parisienne."** Even the advances of his pretty landlady left him unruffled. "She plays the flirt with me," he wrote, "she tends her flowers under my window and hums songs, and all these thoughtful little attentions interfere with my peace of mind. I thank God for making me bashful; it saves me from sin."" Had his health been better, he would probably not have resisted temptation. What an oddly made fellow he was: average height (5*9"), a stocky, solid body, sinews of steel, and the nerves of a fainting female. When the least little thing went wrong, he had a flush of fever or stomach cramps. Even the escapades of his dog Bulka, who was a roving type, threw him into exaggerated states of anxiety. One day when he was afraid the animal had been shot by the police, his nose began to bleed. He was so vexed because he could not find a good copyist in Pyatigorsk that he developed a migraine. In the end, he turned over his rough drafts to his serf Vanyushka, who copied them out as best he could. But Vanyushka fell ill. New source of exasperation for the young gentleman. No doubt about it: the whole world was conspiring against him. Manfully making the best of it, he cleaned his room himself, did the cooking and nursed his servant devotedly. Hie only trouble was that by lolling in bed and being served by his master the fellow was acquiring a taste for laziness and saucy retorts. Oncc he was back on his feet, he had to be threatened with the knout. But as Tolstoy had had Alyoshka, another of his servants,48 flogged a few weeks before, the warning bore fruit, and Vanyushka went back to work. Thus, at the same time as he was congratulating himself on his growing love for the human race, the young count was unable to forget either the distance that separated him from his serfs or the best way of making them behave. On June 29, 1852 he enthusiastically noted in his diary, "The man whose only goal is his own happiness is bad; he whose goal is the good opinion of others is weak; he whose goal is the happiness of others is good; he whose goal is God, is great! . . ."