Jay Parini - The Last Station

I touched him on the wrist. ‘You must come to me alone at Meshcherskoye,’ I said. ‘Forbid her to come. Do you understand?’

‘That cannot be done.’

‘It can!’ I insisted. ‘It would be good for her. She doesn’t realize it, but it would benefit her marriage. A husband and wife sometimes have to put time as well as distance between themselves to survive.’

He looked at me with his sad, large eyes and said nothing. I have to make him understand.

He has betrayed me again. I returned from Moscow with Andrey and discovered that he had stolen off to Kochety. I ran straight to the pond. I wanted to end my life, to make him regret everything he has ever done to me. It was midday, but the world seemed empty. No people. Not a muzhik in the field. Not a bird on a black branch. The air was empty.

I lay on the bank, where the moss is thick as suede, rubbing my face in a patch of grass. Water was seething, rising through the knobby roots of alders, the willows, the black weeds. I listened, hoping to learn something by keeping still. Wondering: Should I die? Must I die?

It is always worst in spring, this feeling that I must die. Worse than in winter, which is bad enough. Snow is mercifully blank. It has no story. It does not jab at me like the blood rose, the gelder rose, the prickly thorn.

My nerves are bad now. Even last week, in Moscow, I burst into tears when a houseguest, hoping to please me, entered the front hall with fresh flowers. ‘For you, Countess,’ he said. ‘Take them back!’ I shouted to the man. ‘I don’t want your flowers!’

I wish I were the wind, invisible, circulating without body, without intent.

Lyovochka thinks that I do not love God. That God means nothing to me. But I prayed, at the pond’s edge, digging my face in the moss, in a patch of grass beside the moss: ‘God, my God… Why hast Thou forsaken me?’

I rolled onto my back. I let the sun finger my body. I spread my legs to it, the godly sun, its knife, its blade of light. It was hot on my things, and I found myself laughing and weeping.

I would not die today. No, I would not die. I would go to Kochety, at once. I would take back my Lyovochka.

I summoned the maids and a driver. Andrey said we would ride through the night if necessary. I would not give Lyovochka time to rewrite the will.

‘Papa is not in his right mind these days,’ Andrey said. ‘I don’t think he is capable of defending himself from those thieves he calls disciples.’

I kissed Andrey on both cheeks. I bowed my head to him. He is such a fine son. I wish all my children had turned out like him. He does not play at false modesty, at make-believe chastity, at pseudo-religious piety.

I went to my room to prepare for the journey, but before doing anything I wrote the truth of things in my diary. Otherwise, they will read and believe the diaries of Lyovochka and Chertkov. For all I know, even the parlor maids are keeping diaries. They watch me slyly as I pass, smiling behind my back.

We left for Kochety after dinner. My heart was palpitating the whole way, the pulse reaching extraordinary and life-threatening levels. I broke into tears, off and on, though Andrey was patient. He understands me so well. He knows that there is no moral reason for going along with Lyovochka’s schemes for giving our property to the masses, who would not know what to do with it anyway. Chertkov’s notions are all calculated to destroy me. And our family. There is nothing more pathetic than impoverished aristocrats.

We arrived just before lunch the following day, having slept badly on the train in cramped sleepers (so much for first-class service!). It was as I suspected. Vladimir Grigorevich was there, wringing his puffy hands. He was standing beside my husband on the steps, gloating over his possession.

‘What a pleasant surprise,’ he said, taking my hand.

‘I’m always happy to make you happy,’ I said.

We stabbed each other with our eyes, taking care not to lose our artificial smiles.

I had barely stepped into the house when Lyovochka and Chertkov began to whisper and sneer like schoolgirls. Like lovers…

It’s unnatural for a man of my husband’s age to cluck and coo over a beastly younger disciple. Whenever I suggest as much, Lyovochka becomes irate, irrational, even hysterical. Whenever I act from powerful and genuine feelings, they call me ‘a lunatic.’ When Lyovochka does the same, he is called ‘a genius.’

Tanya’s lunch was formal, with waiters in white jackets hovering behind our chairs. Sukhotin presided like an Oriental potentate. ‘You are looking so well,’ he kept saying, which made me wonder how frightful, in fact, I must look.

Andrey talked with animation about land resources and the latest measure taken by the government to extort money from the land-owning classes, who end up paying for everything – as usual. It is no wonder I have so little money. Count Generosity gives away everything he earns while our estates bring in less each year, partly because of poor management and servants who steal whatever they can lay their greedy hands on. Is it any wonder I get frantic when I think of his giving away the copyrights to his work?

I spoke of the unfairness of these new taxes, too, expecting at least a pleasant nod from my husband. Instead, he sulked, looking up occasionally at Vladimir Grigorevich as if to say, ‘You’re quite right. The woman is intolerable. Just as you said. A bitch.’

I don’t know why everyone puts up with that man, with his pointy little beard, his reptilian eyes going their separate ways. He dandles his paunch with a fidgety hand as if it were a treasure.

After lunch, my husband spent the afternoon on horseback beside his lover, riding through the woods where nobody could see them – in Prince Golitsyn’s park, seven versts from Kochety. I could see them in my mind, like satyrs, scampering about in the dark brush. I tried to banish these images, telling myself how irrational they were, but they would not go away. I could feel my heart racing, my temples pulsing like the throat of a frog.

It began to rain not long after their departure. A damp chill blew through the house, which grew terribly dark. I said to Tanya, ‘You know, a man of your father’s age can easily catch his death of cold.’ I could think of a dozen cases in point.

‘Mama, you fret too much,’ she said, coldly. ‘Vladimir Grigorevich is with him. They will surely take shelter in an isba if the rain continues.’

‘Nobody listens to me anymore,’ I said.

Tanya refused to notice that I had said anything at all. I realized how blessedly lucky we are that she no longer lives with us. Her pretensions to levelheadedness would be more than I could bear. And she has this accusatory little mouth that puckers up when she doesn’t get her way. Who could believe she is my own daughter?

Lyovochka arrived home safely, and I was glad for this, though I had to suffer Tanya’s smugness.

That night, he came into my bedroom near midnight. I was reading the Bible, the Book of Ruth, with several candles burning on a table beside my bed.

‘Good evening, dear,’ I said. ‘Are you unable to sleep?’

He bent close and kissed me. It was not a sincere kiss, but at least he kissed me. I half-wondered if he was going to ask for a sexual favor. At his age, you would think he’d be over such requests. But one never knows with him. There’s no goat like an old goat.

‘Sit on the bed,’ I said. ‘Here.’ I moved over to make room for him.

I knew something weighed on his mind. He had that stony look that overwhelms him whenever he is about to make a confession or create a scene. It made my stomach flutter.

‘Our life together has become intolerable,’ he said, speaking to the wall. He never looks directly at me when he makes cruel remarks.