Jay Parini - The Last Station

I tiptoed to the study, where they had shut the door firmly. Lyovochka never shuts his door. It is always ajar, as if to say, ‘Yes, I am working, but you may knock and enter.’

As I listened, my worst fears were confirmed. They were whispering, and my heart stopped when, above the low rustle of language, I heard my name.

My heart caught between beats; I thought surely I would faint when Sasha said, clearly, ‘Of course, Mama would kill us if she found out.’ And Chertkov hushed her. They waited, panicky, for a long time, as if listening for footsteps. But I did not move.

When they resumed their whispering, I fled downstairs, where I sat in the parlor with a glass of vodka, burning inside. I resolved to climb onto the balcony where the door, with its venetian slats, might allow me to hear what they were planning. It was information that might be crucial to the welfare of my family.

There is a narrow ledge running along the second floor, and it is possible to slip along the building if you keep your back pressed tightly to the wall. Squeezing through a window, I was able to edge my way along the wall. My weight, unfortunately, is such that the balance was precarious. At several points I swayed forward, almost swooning. Soon I stood exactly outside Lyovochka’s study.

I listened at the blinds. Their voices, though hushed, could be clearly discerned through the lathwork.

‘I cannot do it,’ said Lyovochka.

‘Papa, I think he is right. You must listen to him. He has in mind only your best interests.’

‘The interests of the people,’ Chertkov added. ‘Which are, of course, identical with the best interests of Leo Nikolayevich.’

Here were my enemies, huddled and scheming, inventing their little plots. It was all too horrific. Suddenly I lost my balance; the ground tilted over my ankles, or seemed to tilt, and I shrieked.

‘Who’s there?’ shouted my daughter. Her voice was harsh, bitter, unforgiving.

I went bowling through the latched shutters, flung like a turnkey by the weight of gravity. My skirts fluttered up over my shoulders. I was upside down, peering at the assembled company from between my thighs. ‘You’re all plotting against me!’ I shouted. ‘In my own house, too!’

My husband slumped in his chair, staring ahead weirdly.

‘You will kill him, Mama,’ Sasha said smugly. ‘But that’s what you want, isn’t it? You want him to die!’

She left me standing there by myself as Ilya, the houseboy, and Chertkov carried Lyovochka out of the room.

When Chertkov returned, he seemed more ferocious than I have ever seen him. The putty of his cheeks blazed like newly fired clay.

I said, ‘Vladimir Grigorevich, I know exactly what you’re trying to do. Don’t think that you deceive me for one little moment. I want my husband’s diaries back. Return them immediately to this house, where they belong. In the name of God!’

‘What are you afraid of?’

‘You’re the Devil himself,’ I said.

He looked beyond me to a far corner of the room. ‘Had I cared to, I could have demolished you and your family. It would have been only too easy, you know. The press is bloodthirsty.’

I wish to God my husband could have heard him talking then, the real Chertkov.

‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Ruin us. Tell them anything you like.’

‘I have too much respect for Leo Nikolayevich to attempt such a thing. You are lucky.’

‘I detest you, Vladimir Grigorevich.’ My lips quivered. I could barely contain myself.

‘If I had a wife like you,’ he said, moving toward the door, ‘I would have blown my brains out a long time ago. Or gone to America.’

That night, in bed, I dreamt that my husband and Vladimir Grigorevich were lying on the wet forest floor of Zasyeka, naked, writhing in the dead leaves: an old man, white haired, with a beard of snow, engaged with his fat-faced, oily disciple in an act of monstrous intercourse. They wriggled in the mud like worms.

I woke with a start, pooled in sweat. Trembling, I knelt at the side of my bed and prayed, aloud, ‘God, dear God. Have mercy on me, a sinner.’

I don’t know how long I can allow this double life to continue. In the presence of Leo Nikolayevich, I pretend my private life is beyond reproach. That is, I avoid the subject altogether. He assumes (or I assume that he assumes) that I live according to his principles, since I have vocally supported them and written about them, too, with enthusiasm. But this little deceit, and the nearly invisible contradictions in my life, trouble me.

I do not consider myself immoral. A man must follow his own conscience, and while the Tolstoyans oppose sexual relations outside of marriage (indeed, Leo Nikolayevich has grave doubts about the morality of sex within marriage), I find myself more in accord with Plato, who said that one can progress from sexual love to spiritual love. Ideally, one should not have to suffer a split between body and soul.

I do love Masha. My life has changed utterly since we met. But it has become difficult for us to maintain our love at Telyatinki. Sergeyenko hardly speaks to me now. He shuns Masha completely, rudely, and she has become exasperated. Yesterday she spoke of leaving for St Petersburg, where a Tolstoyan enclave has just been started by a group of her former acquaintances.

‘My intent was never to stay here for longer than a few months. When Chertkov invited me to come, he was quite explicit about this,’ she said.

‘Nobody ever worries about that kind of thing here.’

‘ I worry about it.’

‘Sergeyenko ought to be shot.’

‘You don’t mean it, Valya. He isn’t nearly so rude as you imagine. You think everyone is shunning us. It’s not true.’

I could not convince her. She is so imperturbable, so clear-eyed in the face of a storm.

I would spend more time with her if I could, but that has become impossible. Leo Nikolayevich needs me badly at present, and he prefers that I stay overnight at Yasnaya Polyana. He wants me there so that he can escape from the family tensions, I suspect. Chertkov has become nothing less than obsessive lately, coming up with new schemes every week for booklets, pamphlets, anthologies, selections. I doubt the purity of his motives, but Leo Nikolayevich doesn’t. He agrees eagerly with Chertkov about everything.

Sofya Andreyevna has been of no help. She discovers plots where none exist. Indeed, she imagines that Chertkov is trying to have her and the children written out of the will, as if Leo Nikolayevich could ever do such a thing.

Chertkov may be something of a prig and a bore, but he is not cruel. On the other hand, without religion to restrain him, I suspect he could be barbarous. There is a peculiar heartlessness in his laugh.

Sofya Andreyevna is obsessed with regaining possession of her husband’s diaries. Leo Nikolayevich no doubt writes truthfully about the flux of their relations, but she does not want posterity to have access to this information.

‘Can you understand why this bothers me so much?’ she asked me last night, as I brought her tea.

‘Yes, I can,’ I said. ‘But you mustn’t think that Leo Nikolayevich would consciously distort the nature of your marriage in his diaries. The truth means everything to him.’

‘He thinks he’s honest, but he doesn’t know himself very well. He doesn’t realize, for instance, that he loves Chertkov and despises me. He thinks he loves me. But you should see the kind of things he writes about me. These will delight future biographers. They will say, “Poor Leo Tolstoy… dragged down by a jealous, foolish, possessive, and extravagant wife who could not possibly share his lofty intellectual or moral life.”’