Jay Parini - The Last Station

I went downstairs, into the library. I don’t know exactly how long I waited there, on my knees like a scrubwoman, trying to work up the courage to swallow the fateful substance. I should have done it instantly.

It was Sasha who found me.

‘What idiotic thing is this, Mama?’ she said, as if it were nothing. Just Mama on her knees with a little opium in her hands.

‘One swallow, please! Just one!’ I said, waving the vial before my lips.

She tried to grab it from my hands, but I closed my fists about it. ‘It’s mine! It’s mine!’ I could hear myself saying, as if someone else were talking.

‘So drink it,’ she said. ‘Suit yourself.’

The ungrateful bitch.

‘You disgust me,’ I said.

I fell on the floor, hardly able to breathe. The vial spilled, and the smell of the opium surrounded me. Three servants lifted me into bed, one of them the ghostly Timothy, whose eyes quiver with the perpetual fury of a bastard. I was examined by Dushan Makovitsky, who kept muttering to himself as if I were not present. He is a nasty little cur.

My husband feigned concern, as he must. He is too cowardly to say outright that he finds me repulsive. But he does. The very sight of me sours his stomach.

‘Do you love me, Lyovochka?’ I asked him.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘Nothing can stop that.’

‘Then fetch me your diary. I want to read what you’re writing about me. I must have the truth.’

‘What makes you think there is anything to read that concerns you?’

‘I want to read your diary,’ I repeated, coolly. He looked like the sky had fallen on his shoulders. ‘I have no secrets,’ he said. ‘My relations with you are public knowledge. I doubt if there is one muzhik in Russia who does not know everything about us.’

The diary was brought to me by a servant, Leo Tolstoy not being man enough to bring it himself. My fingers, twitching uncontrollably, turned the thick pages. It was almost too much to bear. Almost at once the telltale sentence snapped its beak like a prehistoric bird, ugly and devouring: ‘I must try to fight Sonya consciously, with kindness and love.’

I called for my husband, repeating the sentence in my head like a death knell: I must try to fight Sonya consciously, with kindness and love .

He stood in the doorway, meek, almost insubstantial.

I glared at him.

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Why do you want to fight me? What is it I’ve done to deserve such treatment?’

‘I see nothing in what I’ve written that should upset you.’

‘Let me see your other diaries. I want to read all your diaries from the last ten years.’

‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’ He looked away from me as he spoke.

‘Where are they, Lyovochka? Where have you hidden them?’

‘I have not hidden them.’

‘Are they here?’

‘No.’

‘Does Chertkov have them?’

‘Please, Sonya. I… I–’

‘I knew it! He is greedily reading everything you have said about me. This is despicable. Have I not been an honest, loving wife for all these years? Answer me, Lyovochka!’

It began raining hard against the house, the wind blowing in through the curtains. The room grew hot and damp, and the day fell dark.

‘I don’t mind telling you the truth,’ he said, after a difficult pause. ‘Chertkov certainly has them. I gave them to him for safekeeping.’

‘This is the worst thing you have ever done to me,’ I said.

My stomach was sick now. I wanted to vomit. I threw off the covers and ran from the bedroom, down the slippery stairwell, out into the rain. For an hour I wandered in the orchard, blind with misery, but nobody came for me. They all hoped I would die. That was just what they wanted, but I was not about to grant them that satisfaction. I came home shivering, wet as moss, and crawled into bed like a child beaten once too many times.

Voices drifted into my room from down the hall. My husband was talking with Dushan Makovitsky. I could faintly make out his words. ‘The insane are always better at achieving their purposes than the sane,’ he was saying. ‘They have no morality to hold them back. They have no shame, no conscience.’

The very next day, Bulgakov told me the horrifying news that spelled – in essence – the end of my life. Chertkov had been granted permission to return to Telyatinki to visit his mother. He could stay as long as his mother remains in the province. Indeed, he was already there, plotting and scheming only a few versts from Yasnaya Polyana.

On the morning of the twenty-eighth, while everyone was asleep, Chertkov slipped through a deep mist that stood in the fields, the thick morning mist of midsummer that snags in the pine trees of Zasyeka, that blankets the isbas, a mist like sleep itself, a swirl on the cool Voronka. He came into our house like a thief and woke the kitchen servants, insisting that tea be brought to him in the parlor.

Lyovochka was wakened by Ilya, the servant boy, and he came bounding down the stairwell like a bridegroom on his wedding day. I know this even though I did not see it. Once you have seen the moon, you know what it looks like.

When I came into the parlor, Vladimir Grigorevich bowed with revolting politeness. He remains a dandy, in spite of the Tolstoyan overlays. His britches were made in England, and his red cashmere socks were distinctly un-Tolstoyan. He affected a blue linen blouse – the kind the muzhiks wear to church.

‘Good morning, Sofya Andreyevna. I am delighted to see you,’ he said.

He handed me a note:

I understand that you have in recent days been speaking of me as an enemy. I do hope this feeling can be attributed to some passing annoyance, caused by a misunderstanding that person-to-person communication will dispel like a bad dream. Since Leo Nikolayevich represents, for both of us, what we consider most valuable in life, a substantial, inevitable bond must already have formed between us.

Feeling lost and stupefied, I went back to my room and wept. Chertkov had doubtless shown this letter to Lyovochka, who would have said to himself, ‘See! Vladimir Grigorevich is bending over backward to befriend her. He is being generous and openhearted.’ He cannot see that Chertkov is trying to hoodwink us both.

Three days later, Chertkov walked brazenly into the dining room during the midday meal. My husband became wildly solicitous, as if the tsar himself had arrived unexpectedly. He dragged a chair from the wall for him, offering him anything he might like. ‘What will it be, my dearest dear, my lovely Vladimir Grigorevich? My wife’s heart on a platter? Her kidneys? With salt? But of course, my dear Vladimir Grigorevich! Whatever pleases you! You would like the estate, is that it? Fine! And permanent copyright on everything I’ve ever written? Certainly!’

I tried, with difficulty, to sit through the meal, but they had no interest in my company. After the first course, I excused myself by saying that a headache was coming on (it was) and left the room. Upstairs, I settled at my desk to write in my diary. It was July 1. The hottest day yet. In the past, writing in my diary relieved certain feelings. Now, I could think of nothing to say.

Chertkov stayed through the afternoon and remained for dinner. I pretended not to care. Indeed, I was as polite as could be, inquiring after his mother’s health, his various projects. I showed interest in his wretched publishing company, the very company that is stealing my children’s inheritance. It surprised me that I could remain so cool in the face of such an outrage.

The entire table normally retires to the library for coffee or tea at the end of the meal. Tonight, Sasha furtively whisked Chertkov and her father into the study. I could see that they were plotting. They are always plotting. The whole thing cut and tore at my nerves. I hate it when people lack the courage to tell me what evil deeds they have concocted behind my back….