Jay Parini - The Last Station

Sasha is a sentimental girl, the kind who weeps over the death of a toad; she burst into tears at the sight of me, and we embraced like long-lost sisters. Even Varvara Mikhailovna, who has the sensitivity of a granite monument, shed a few lightly manufactured tears and hugged me.

‘A family gathering!’ said Chertkov, dripping poison as he stepped from the shadows. Light glanced from his slick, bald forehead. He was redolent of scent – a womanly affectation appropriate to a man of his Greekish ways.

‘It is good to see you, Vladimir Grigorevich.’

‘Always a pleasure, to be sure.’

‘I would like you to visit us tomorrow. Will you come for lunch?’

He thanked me without a trace of his usual irony, a marvelous performance.

The offer was rash, however. I should have known better. He contaminates the ground he walks on. And there is the matter of habit. If the idea were planted that he could visit us without difficulty, he would turn up every day.

When I heard the approach of his carriage, my pulse began to race: 142! I peered out the window of my bedroom with binoculars. Lyovochka stood on the front steps, happily waiting to receive his disciple. I had asked him not to embrace the man. That is more than I can bear. But he could not hide the joy on his face; he looked like a young bride who has just spied her lover in the distance. A disgusting thing for the servants to see!

How I managed I shall never know. With all my strength, I maintained a cool civility, inquiring after his mother and wife, inwardly counting the minutes till that scoundrel was out of my house. When he had finally gone, I begged Lyovochka to make this the last time I had to endure that malevolent presence. He unexpectedly agreed to write to Chertkov and his wife, suggesting that this experiment in reconciliation was premature. Some time must pass before they attempt another visit.

I suppose Lyovochka was unwilling to make my life harder because he feels guilty. A few days ago, I discovered a secret diary in his boot. I’ve said nothing to him about the diary, but he must realize it is missing. The wording is cryptic, but it confirms my suspicion that he and Chertkov have entered into an unholy contract to steal his copyrights from the family. This comes just when I have had an offer from Prozveshenye, one of the most sturdy publishing firms in Russia, to purchase all the rights to Lyovochka’s work upon his death. And they have offered one million rubles! Enough to sustain the Tolstoy family – all twenty-five grandchildren included – for life!

I went into Lyovochka’s study with the letter from Prozveshenye, but he waved me aside.

‘Don’t concern yourself with such matters,’ he said. ‘They are of no importance. I do not write for publishers. I write for people.’

He was beyond arguing with, so I was forced to write an explicit letter to him on the fourteenth of October:

You ask about my health every day with an air of compassion, Lyovochka. You ask how I have slept with such apparent concern in your voice. And yet, each day, you drive fresh nails into my heart, shortening my life and subjecting me to unbearable pain. Nothing I do seems to ease this pain – you should know that. It was the decision of Fate that I should learn about this twist, this corrupt deed you have perpetrated by depriving your numerous offspring of your copyrights (I might point out that your partner in crime has not done the same kind of thing to his family)….

The government that you and your friends slander and criticize in your pamphlets will now legally take the bread out of the mouths of your heirs and give it to some rich publishers in Moscow, while your very own grandchildren will starve as a result of your vanity and sin. And it is the government, again – in the form of the State Bank – that will receive Tolstoy’s diaries for safekeeping, a mere ruse for keeping them from your wife…

I am horrified, aghast, to think of what evil may grow up out of your grave, and in the memories of your children and grandchildren.

I put this letter on his desk in the morning. Just before lunch, my hands trembling, I knocked at the door of his study. I wanted his reaction, in person. This is too important an issue to leave to chance.

He told me to come in.

‘Lyovochka,’ I said, feeling like a schoolgirl on a visit to the headmaster. ‘I wonder if you have read my letter.’

‘I have.’

I waited beside him, my hands folded in front of my apron. ‘Do you have anything to say to me?’

He looked up at me with disdain such as I have never seen before on his face. His nostrils appeared, like a bull’s, to flare.

‘Can you possibly leave me in peace?’ he asked.

I implored him to think about his family, to reconsider whatever he had done to adjust his will, to listen to reason. But he sat impassively in his chair, casting a pall across the room like a bare electric light.

‘Are you finished, Sofya Andreyevna?’

‘I am,’ I said. I could see that, in all ways, I was. Whatever love may have lived between us was dead.

We spoke not a word to each other that day. The following morning he left home before breakfast, on horseback. This was most unlike him. I realized he must be heading to Telyatinki, so I set off, on foot, for Chertkov’s house.

At the entrance to the estate, I hid myself in a low ditch. I lay there all day with binoculars trained on the house. I did not see Lyovochka’s horse anywhere, or catch a glimpse of him. Twice I saw Chertkov come and go, which made me wonder if, indeed, Lyovochka had gone to Telyatinki. Perhaps I had been mistaken?

When darkness began to fall, I set off, weary of heart, back to Yasnaya Polyana. By the time I got there, my temples throbbed. My feet burned. I felt dizzy and nauseated.

I sat on a wooden bench, beneath a tall pine, for an hour or two. Stars speckled the sky above me, and I felt I was looking into infinity. I said, in my heart, I am all yours, God. Take me. Take me . I wanted God or oblivion. I wanted to count myself among the thousand stars.

I might easily have sat there forever had not Ivan, the coach driver, seen me.

‘Countess? Is that you?’

‘Ivan,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I am quite unwell, Ivan. Help me.’

He took my hand and led me home, like an old mule back to the barn.

Lyovochka was still awake, sitting on his bed, reading by candlelight. I don’t know why I did this, but I told him exactly what I had done that day, how I had waited in the ditch, frantic, till nightfall. How I had asked, prayed, even begged, for death.

He listened carefully, then said, ‘Sonya, I am extremely tired of your whims. What I want now is freedom. I am eighty-two years old, and I refuse to let you treat me like a child. I will not be tied to my wife’s apron strings!’

‘What does this mean?’

‘It means that, from now on, I shall feel perfectly free to write to Chertkov, even to meet with him when I feel it is necessary. I cannot play this game any longer.’

‘You can’t do this to me,’ I said.

‘Wait and see,’ he said.

The next day, Lyovochka seemed determined to prove his independence. He sat in the garden drinking tea with Novikov, a muzhik he admires for reasons I cannot fathom. Right in front of me, Novikov said, ‘You ought to see how we treat our women in the village! When they get out of line – swat!’ He slapped his thigh with a flat palm. ‘A woman has to be ruled with a stick! It’s the only way to keep them quiet.’

Lyovochka, apostle of nonviolence, began to laugh uncontrollably. ‘We have a good deal to learn from the muzhiks,’ he said. ‘This is quite wonderful. Lovely!’

I left them to their ridiculous conversation.