And they burst out laughing, delighted by this tomfoolery that showed the depth of their love. Yet Sonya was nothing less than a child- woman. She soon made up her mind that the house was going to be run her way. She did not like some of her husband's habits. For instance, he preferred to sleep like the muzhiks, rolled up in a blanket with his head on a leather cushion. She insisted that he sleep between sheets and use a pillow, like city folk. And the servants, who had been sleeping on the ground, in the corridors or hall or wherever they liked before she came, were each instructed to repair to a designated place for the night. How was one to teach obedience to this ignorant, immovable and slovenly horde? 'Iliere was the cook: Nicholas Mikhailovich, the one who had played the flute in Prince Volkonsky's serf-orchestra.0 When asked why he had traded his flute for a cookstove he sullenly replied, "Because I lost my mouthpiece." Often, he was too drunk to prepare the meal, and his feeble-minded helper Alyosha Gorshok took his place at the stove. Another remarkable character was Agatha Mikhailovna, the housekeeper, who was forever knitting a stocking as she walked and was so fond of animals that she could not swallow one bite of meat or step on a cockroach, and she gave milk to the mice and flics to the spiders. One of her duties was to bring up the innumerable litters of Tolstoy puppies, which she kept in her own revoltingly filthy room; she covered them with her own clothes to keep them warm and, if one was sick, lighted a candle for it before the icon of St. Nicholas. Then there were Dunyasha, the buxom chambermaid, Alexis the valet, the laundress and her daughters, Vasily Ermilin the village elder, the redheaded coachman Indvushkin and all manner of assistants, apprentices, errand boys, sewing-women and charwomen, whose faces and names were hard to remember. Mild old Aunt Toinette had given them free rein for years; Sonya took them in hand with stern authority. Her furious pulls on the bell-rope roused them from their apathy. She scolded Dunyasha, Alyosha Gorshok and even Agatha Mikhailovna. Tolstoy was startled by the loud voices that penetrated the walls of his study, but he did not yet begin to worry. He could not imagine that his wife— so young!—might be difficult or hard to live with. Yet he did see that Aunt Toinette, dispossessed of her prerogatives as mistress of the house, was withering and fading away at the side of her inseparable companion Natalya Petrovna. The woman who had brought him up from infancy, known and pardoned all his youthful follies, jealously guarded his privacy when he grew up, was now withdrawing into the shadows, feeling that her work was done. "Aunt's face has suddenly begun to age, to my sorrow," he wrote in his diary.1
Although Aunt Toinette had shriveled away almost to nothing, the mere fact of her presence maintained an odor of debility and decrepitude about the house. Coming from her big, boisterous, jolly family, Sonya soon liegan to suffer from the tedium of life at Yasnaya Polyana. When the joy of discovery had worn off, she suddenly found herself very much alone. Her husband, preoccupicd with the management of his estate, spent much of his time away in the country. The moment lie was out of sight, she fell into a state of torpor. She took up her diary again; perhaps Tolstoy even encouraged her to do so. Naturally, she only felt like writing in moments of melancholy, so her recital spins out
0 Like old Tikhon, who had been a footman in the time of Tolstoy's father.
like an unfinished tapestry, from which the light threads arc missing that would give relief to the pattern. "This solitude weighs upon me terribly,'' she wrote. "There was so much animation at home and here, when Leo is gone, everything is so colorless. He has almost always lived alone and does not understand what I feel. . . . There is never a joyful shout in this house. It is as though everyone were dead. . . ." "I feci guilty toward Aunt. I should have more consideration for her, if only bccause she cared for my husband when he was little and will care for my own children later. . . "I do not think I love Aunt, and that disturbs inc. I am irritated by her age rather than touched by it. . . ." "Aunt is sweet and good-tempered, but I find it hard to be around her: she is old. . .
Sensing her difficulties, Aunt Toinette looked on in silence and pitied her. One evening when Tolstoy was away she came up to the young woman, took her hand and kissed it. "Why?" wrote Sonya. "I believe she has a kind heart, and it pains her to sec me alone."
To combat this stultifying atmosphere, Sonya threw herself into her work. With a bunch of heavy keys dangling from her belt, she sped from basement to attic, toured the farmyard, kept an eye on the milch-cows' yield, presided over the cucumber-pickling and kept the account books. And Tolstoy, after dismissing his stewards, decided he would manage the eighteen hundred acrcs that were left to him alone. Always eager to try any new-fangled agricultural gadget, he launched out into beekeeping, setting up his hives over by the Zasyeka forest, planted apple trees in his orchard, tried growing cabbage on an industrial scale, built a distillery, had a go at sheep-farming, and imported some Japanese pigs he had seen at Shatilov the stockbreeder's. When the first consignment arrived, he exclaimed, "What snouts! What an exotic breed!" and entrusted the precious specimens to the care of an old drunkard, one of his proteges whom he naively hoped to reform through work. But the swineherd did not appreciate the great favor that had been bestowed upon him, it offended him to be asked to take care of pigs, and he took his revenge by letting them starve to death. Tolstoy attributed their demise to an epidemic, and turned to new fields of exploration. "My sole preoccupations are money and commonplace, pedestrian comfort," he confessed.8 And Sonya echocd, "Can it be that he cares for nothing but money, managing the estate and running the distillery? When he is not eating, sleeping or being silent, he is loping al>out on business, running, running, always alone."4
Fet, the poet, called at Yasnaya Polyana one day and found the master of the domain directing a team of men who were seining the pond for carp. Completely absorbed in the delicate business of placing
the nets, Tolstoy greeted his guest distractedly and called to his wife, who came running dressed all in white, with her heavy keys jangling at her waist. To gain time, she leaped over a hedge.
"What arc you doing, countess?" cried Fet. "You must be careful!"
"It's nothing, I'm used to it," she answered.
And when Tolstoy ordered a sack brought from the storehouse, she detached a key from her ring and gave it to a boy who sped away like an arrow:
"There!" said Tolstoy. "You see our method at work: keep the kc>-s on one's person and send the youngsters to do the work."
The youngsters were particularly easy to come by, since the village schools had been closed. On October 1, 1862, immediately after his return to Yasnaya Polyana, lie wrote: "Have said good-bye to the students and the common people." And a fortnight later: "Decided to give up the review; the schools too." Surprising decision from a man who, a short time before, had been claiming that the education of the peasants was the supreme goal of his life. Once again, without the slightest hesitation, he took a stand directly opposed to his previous position. Ilis passion for teaching was followed by utter indifference to education in any form. He allowed his associates to continue for a few weeks, but without any supervision or counscl, and then he dismissed them. "The students are going away," he wrote 011 December 29, 1862. "And I feel sorry for them." Tlicy had all scented the danger, moreover, when they saw Tolstoy arriving with his child-bride dressed in city clothes. They could not understand how he had married an upper-class girl after declaring that "to marry a woman of society is to swallow the whole- poison of civilization." Sonya immediately felt their animosity, and was on her guard. To her the school, the muzhiks, the long-haired students with their equalitarian theories were just so many sworn enemies of her love. Since her husband was attracted to tlicm, she must fight them. With remarkable intuition she wrote in her diary, two months after her marriage: "lie makes me sick, with his 'people'! I feel he is going to have to choose between the family, which I personify, and those people he loves so passionately. It's selfish of me? Well, too bad. I live for him and by him and I want it to be the same for him. If I am not interesting to him, if I'm only a plaything, not a human being, then I neither can nor will go 011 living like this." To force him to choose between her and his muzhiks, she ran away and hid in the garden. "One feels so free outdoors! ... lie has comc out, he's looking for me, he is worried." After winning the battle of the students' dismissal, she began to be alarmed by the case of her victory. Would he remain faithful to her, if he could so readily abjure what he had once worshiped? "He loves me