The rhythm of their periods of love, suspicion and resentment was unfortunately syncopated, which gave rise to tempestuous outbursts. What complicated their relations was that each had given the other permission to read his diary, and thus their private confessions unconsciously turned into arguments of prosecution or defense. All too often, they set down on paper what they had not dared to say out loud. Then, with their own conscience at rest, they awaited results with morbid curiosity. "Lyovochka has said nothing and has not made the slightest allusion to my diary. Has he read it? I don't know. What I wrote is vile and I don't like to read it over."21 The result of this practice was that the couple lived on two levels, one of speech and the other of writing. Decisions won by one of them in the lower court were appealed by the other in the upper. They could hardly have striven more mightily to bare their naked souls if their chief object had been to become thoroughly disgusted with each other. The miracle is that their marriage stood the strain of this continual rivalry to See which could be most truthful.
As Sonya complained of being lonely Tolstoy agreed, after three months of marriage, to go to Moscow with her. She was very eager to sec her family again, but to avoid tension with Lisa it was decided that the young couple would not stay at the Behrs', but at the Hotel Chev- ricr on Gaz.etnaya Street behind the University. The moment Sonya arrived, on December 23, 1862, her enthusiasm collapscd. Oh, she was glad to see her parents and brothers again, and her mischievous Tanya whom Tolstoy cheerily addressed in the familiar form, and even Lisa, who showed nothing of her chagrin; but she no longer felt at home among these people who had previously been her whole world. Her hopes and cares were elsewhere. Back in her childhood circle, she had the impression that she was wasting time. "Maman is right, I have grown dull," she wistfully wrote. "I miss my former liveliness." Parties and society no longer interested her. She often let Tolstoy go off by himself to visit his friends, and waited for him in their hotel room, dreaming of Yasnaya Polyana in the snow. "Let us hurry back to Yasnaya Polyana, where Lyovochka lives more with me and for me, and where I am alone with Auntie and him," she wrote. "I adore that life and would not change it for any other."22 And Moscow was a disappointment to him, too. Everything irritated him. lie was jealous because Sonya had seen handsome Mitrofan Polivanov again, who had almost been her fianc<5. Of course, after his tantrum, he begged her to forgive him. "We patched things up as best we could," he wrote. "I am always annoyed with myself on such occasions, mostly because of the kisses, which are just false plaster. . . . After dinner the plaster cracked. Tears, fits of nerves. The best proof that I love her is that I was not angry. It is hard for me to stay home with her alone. I sec that she is unhappy, but I am still more unhappy myself and can say nothing to help her; besides, there is nothing to say."23 But if he came home late, it was her turn to attack: "It will soon be three o'clock and he is still not back. Why did he promise? Is it fair for him to be so unpunctual?"24 And: "Lyovochka has seen fit to impress upon me that he cannot be content with family life, he needs other distractions."2* And as she was writing this in her diary, he tiptoed into the room, took the pen out of her fingers and added in his own hand, "I need nothing and no one, except you." That was enough to keep her smiling for the rest of the evening, but the next day her doubts and fits of temper and anxiety returned. She did have some excuse: for the last few weeks she had known she was pregnant. A feeling of mingled pride and fear took root in her heart.
On February 8, 1863 she set out with her husband for Yasnaya Polyana and the unvarying routine of country life, poorly lighted, half-heated rooms, slovenly servants, whining Aunt Toinette, and the blank, interminable hours spent waiting for Lyovochka, who was out looking after the estate or beating the forest, gun in hand. In Moscow the writer's friends had reproached him for neglecting his writing. After some hesitation, he finished Polikushka, which he had started in Brussels, and began the tale of a horse—a piebald gelding named Kholstomer (Stridcr). The idea for the story had been given to him by his friend Alexander Stakhovich, whose brother Michael owned a stud farm and used to listen to the tales of a doting groom. This long story proved so difficult to write that the author abandoned it and did not finish it until twenty- two years later.26 The final version bore the stamp of Tolstoy's subsequent spiritual development: at first the author had only wanted to pierce the secrets of the soul of an animal; but afterward, when he returned to the piebald gelding who tells the story of his life, he sought and achieved a brilliant analysis of the problem of the interdependence of all beings, the master's rights over the slave, the injustice implicit in any form of ownership, and the ultimate imperatives of every individual. The piebald cannot grasp the fact that he is regarded as a piece of property: "The words 'my horse,' spoken in relation to me, a living horse, seem as strange as it would be to say 'my earth,' 'my air,' 'my water.' . . . Men have agreed among themselves that a single object can be called 'mine' by one person only. And, under the rules of this game, he who can say 'mine' of the largest number of objects is counted the most fortunate." But for the horse, as for Tolstoy, every creature of God belongs to God alone. Suffering from his menial position, his ugliness, age and frustrated ambition, Kholstomer nevertheless leads an exemplary existence in comparison with his master. Even the poor old nag's death serves some purpose—a she-wolf and her cubs eat his carcass—while the man, after spending his life in total idleness, continues to be a general nuisance even as he breathes his last: a grotesque, debauched, fatuous figure who will be dressed up in a fine uniform and put into a wooden box, then in a coffin of lead, and a great deal of money will be spent on a mass in his memory. "Neither his skin nor his flesh nor his bones could be used for anything," wrote Tolstoy with tragic savagery.
Having given up the idea of publishing the first version of Khol-
stonier, he turned his energies to correcting the proofs of The Cossacks, the first part of which he had promised to deliver to Katkov.t "Abysmally weak," he noted. "But it will please the public for that very reason." His mind was whirling with projects, but none succeeded in capturing his fancy entirely. He toyed with the idea of describing the fate of a young pro-Western professor vitiated by his false culture; or a husband with high ideals of marriage, whose wife could not resist the appeal of "waltzes and tinsel and the poesy of the passing moment." 'liven, just to amuse himself, he dashed off two little plays, The Nihilist and The Infected Family. The first was produced in the family circle at Yasnaya Polyana, and all the parts were played by women. The audience howled with laughter at Marya Tolstoy, dressed up as an old bigot, contorting her features and making signs of the cross while the hero spewed revolutionary slogans. She invented lines and added them to her part, to the author's delight. He hoped his second play, The Infected Family—a rather heavy satire on nihilism and feminism—might be produced by the Moscow Little Theater, but the managers turned it down the following year.J