by Cathy Porter
Pasternak the artist has been here and has drawn me, Lev Nikolaevich and Tanya in a variety of poses and angles. He is planning to do a genre painting of our family for the Luxembourg.
Lyova, Dora and little Pavlik have left for Sweden. It was terribly painful to part with them. They lead such irreproachable Christian lives, with the finest ideals and intentions. They have nothing to hide, one could look into the depths of their souls and find nothing but purity and goodness. At 5 in the morning poor little Dora ran to Levushka’s grave to say goodbye to her darling baby; I suffered so much for her and wanted to sob.
20th June. I went to Moscow to negotiate the sale of Sasha’s land; another frightful waste of time and energy. It was hot, I spent two nights on the train, talked to the barrister, did some shopping and so on.
When I returned exhausted next morning, they hadn’t sent any horses, so I had to walk back from Kozlovka. I was in a thoroughly bad temper, the heat was insufferable and the house was crowded with good-for-nothings—Alyosha Dyakov, Goldenweiser, some sculptor, the Sukhotins. Tanya is the only one I care about.
3rd July. Something frightful is drawing near, and it is death.
Lev Nikolaevich fell ill on the night of 27th–28th June. He felt wretched, couldn’t sleep and had difficulty breathing. Sasha and I planned to visit my son Seryozha on the 28th, but I wasn’t sure I could leave him. In the end we did go, at 8 that morning. He slept well that night, but the following day he set off for a walk and could hardly manage to get home. The pain in his chest grew worse, but they put a hot blanket on it and that eased it. He again had a fever on the evening of the 29th when I returned. No one had looked after him properly while I was away! It broke my heart to see him. It must be his heart, I told him. The following morning Doctor Dreyer from Tula discovered he had a high fever and a dangerously high pulse of 150 per minute. He prescribed 10 grains of quinine a day, and caffeine and strophanthus for the heart. But when his temperature fell to 35.9° his pulse was still 150.
We wired Doctor Dubensky in Kaluga (chief doctor at the local hospital and a good friend of ours) who said it was the pulse of the death agony. After several doses of quinine the fever passed, and for two days running his temperature has been normal, 36.2°. But he has just had another two sleepless nights, with a slight chill, a fever and profuse sweating, and he is now feeling exhausted, and what is more serious, his heart has been weakened.
The children have all arrived—apart from Lyova, who is in Sweden, and Tanya. Ilya’s children are here too. Yesterday he invited his three grandsons and Annochka his granddaughter into his room, gave them all chocolates out of a box, made four-year-old Ilyusha tell him about the time he almost drowned in a rainwater tub, and asked Annochka about her hoarseness. Then he said: “Off you go now, I’ll call you again when I’m next feeling bored.” And when they had gone out he kept saying: “What marvellous children.”
Yesterday morning I was putting a hot compress on his stomach and he gazed at me intently and began to weep, saying: “Thank you Sonya. You mustn’t imagine I’m not grateful or don’t love you…” His voice broke with emotion and I kissed his dear familiar hands, telling him what pleasure it gave me to look after him, and how guilty I felt when I couldn’t make him happy. Then we both wept and embraced. For such a long time my soul has yearned for this—a deep and serious recognition of our closeness over the thirty-nine years we have lived together…
Today he said to me: “I am now at a crossroads. I would just as soon go forwards (to death) as backwards (to life). If this passes now, it will just be a respite.” Then he reflected a little and added: “But there’s still so much I want to tell people!”
Yesterday he was anxiously enquiring about some peasant victims of a recent fire in a faraway village, to whom he had asked me to give 35 rubles. He wanted to know if any of them had come to the house, and asked us to tell him if they came asking him for anything.
He had a terrible night last night, 2nd–3rd July; I was with him from two to seven in the morning. He didn’t sleep a wink, and his stomach was aching. Later his chest started hurting, so I massaged it with spirit of camphor and made a cotton-wool compress, which eased the pain. Then he started having pains in his legs and they grew cold, so I massaged them with spirit of camphor and wrapped them in a warm blanket. He began to feel a little better, and I was happy to relieve his suffering. But then he began to feel very low and miserable, so I took his temperature. It was up again—from 36.2° to 37.3°—and he remained feverish for about three hours. Then he went to sleep, and I went off to bed as I was dropping with exhaustion.
I was sitting in his room today reading the Gospels, in which he has marked the passages he considers especially important, and he said to me: “Look how the words accumulate. In the first Gospel it says Christ was simply christened. In the second it has been expanded to: ‘And he saw the skies open,’ and the third makes the further addition: ‘He heard the words, “Sit down and eat, my son,”’ and so on.”
Now my Lyovochka is sleeping. He is still alive, I can see him, hear him, look after him…What will happen next? My God, what unendurable grief, what horror to live without him, without his love, his encouragement, his intelligence, his enthusiasm for the finest things in life.
14th July. Tanya came with her husband, Doctor Shchurovsky arrived from Moscow, and a lot of our friends visited. Telegrams, letters, a great crush of children, grandchildren and acquaintances, one anxiety after another…Eventually I fell ill too. I had a high fever all night, my heartbeat was weak, my pulse was 52, and I had to stay in bed for two days, unable to move.
He is now very thin and weak, but has a good appetite, is sleeping well and is out of pain; he works every morning on his article about the labour question.
Thank God, thank God, for yet another reprieve! I wonder how much longer we will live together! His sunken face, his white hair and beard and his emaciated body and the persistent ache in my heart become unbearable, and I feel as though my life were at an end and I had lost all my interests and energy.
Yes, a phase of my life has just come to an end. A line has been drawn between that period when life went on, and now, when life has simply stopped.
I kept thinking: “Salt baths will help, he’ll get better, he’ll live another ten years; Ems water will repair his digestion, and the warmth of summer and lots of rest will restore his strength…”
But now suddenly it is the end. No health, no strength, nothing to restore, nothing to repair—there’s so little left of Lyovochka now, too little to repair. And what a giant he used to be!
22nd July. Lev Nikolaevich is on the mend. He is taking long walks through the forest, and eating and sleeping well. Thank God!
We received letters from well-wishers in Tula yesterday evening. He burst out laughing and said: “Well, next time I start dying I shall have to do so in earnest, I mustn’t joke about it any more. I’d be ashamed to make people go through all that again, with everyone gathering round, the journalists arriving, the letters and telegrams—and all for nothing!”
We had a delightful letter from Queen Elizabeth of Romania today. She has sent L.N. a brochure she has written, and writes how happy she will be if “la main du maître” lies for a moment on her little book.*
A hot, dry, dusty day. The oats are being harvested. Bright, sunny days, moonlit nights; it’s so beautiful, one longs to make better use of this lovely summer.
30th July. It’s hot again today and there’s a smell of burning, as if there was smoke in the air. It’s impossible to see anything, and the sun has turned into a tiny red ball.
I lead a dreary life, sitting all day by my sick husband’s door and knitting caps for the orphanage. All the life and energy in me has died.
I received a letter from Countess Panina offering us her dacha in Gaspra, in the Crimea, and we are planning to go, although I don’t want to leave before September.
3rd August. Lev Nikolaevich’s latest illness has robbed him of even
more of his strength, although he is a little better today. Terrible heat, very dry again, I swim every day. We were visited this morning by the Myasoedovo villagers who were burnt out in the fire, and we gave them all 7 rubles in the courtyard. There have been so many fires this summer, and there are so many people to be helped!
Then another visitor we didn’t know, called Falz-Fein, who has just lost his young wife and has been left with three young children, desperate and ill with grief. L.N. took him out for a walk and talked to him.
26th August. We’re leaving for the Crimea on 5th September. I went to Moscow on business and shall go again before we leave, probably on the 1st. Cold, windy, damp and vile.
Housekeeping, bills, taxes, packing, endless practical tasks…No walks, no music, nothing but boredom and low spirits. It seems we will be staying in the Crimea for the winter, and this makes me terribly sad! Well, whatever God ordains. A line has been drawn and a new phase in our life is starting. Just as long as Lev Nikolaevich is alive and well.
2nd December (Gaspra, the Crimea). We have been living here since 9th September for the sake of Lev Nikolaevich’s health, and he is making a slow recovery. He was 73 in August, and has aged and grown very much weaker this year.
I haven’t been writing my diary; it has taken me such a long time to get used to the new living conditions and emotional deprivations I have to endure here. But I am now used to it, helped by the knowledge that I am fulfilling my stern duty and my wifely obligations.
Last night I wrote letters to our four absent sons (Andryusha has just arrived), and was then kept awake all night by tormenting memories of my children’s early years, my passionate, anxious relationship with them, the unwitting mistakes I made in their education and my relationship with them now they are grown-up. Then my thoughts turned to my dead children. I saw with agonizing clarity first Alyosha, then Vanechka, at various moments of their lives. I had a vivid vision of Vanechka, thin and ill in bed, when after his prayers, which he invariably said in my presence, he would curl up into a cosy little ball and go off to sleep. I remember how it broke my heart to see his little back and feel his tiny bones under my hand.
And as for the spiritual and physical solitude I endured last night! Things have happened exactly as I imagined. Now that physical infirmity has forced Lev Nikolaevich to abandon amorous relations with his wife (this wasn’t so long ago), instead of that peaceful, affectionate friendship I have longed for in vain all my life, there remains nothing but emptiness.
Morning and evening he greets me and leaves me with a cold and formal kiss. He loses his temper and tends to regard the world about him with utter indifference.
I think more and more of death, imagining with a calm joy the place where my infants have gone.
3rd December. A hot day. I went to Yalta and sent a letter to Seryozha authorizing him to buy 150 acres of land in Telyatinki to add to the Yasnaya property. Oh, this endless unbearable business, which is all so unnecessary to me! I wandered round the town on my own and went to Chukurlar, where I met a consumptive young man begging for a living. Everything here is dreary and chaotic. And there’s more to come. Ilya and Andryusha have just arrived and, to my great displeasure, were playing cards with Sasha, Natasha Obolenskaya, Klassen the German bailiff and my daughter-in-law Olga. I sat sewing silently on my own, then studied some Italian.
4th December. Another hot day, brighter and lovelier than yesterday. The sun is as hot as summer. What a strange changeable climate here, and one’s moods are equally changeable. Lev Nikolaevich, Sukhotin and his son and tutor, Natasha Obolenskaya and I walked to Orianda. The walk tired us a little but the “Horizontal path” was very lovely. We drove home with Sonyusha and Olga, and the sea and sunset were magical.
7th December. I have just said goodbye to Andryusha and my good-natured, childish Ilya. Lev Nikolaevich will accompany them to Yalta and spend the night there with Masha, which he has wanted to do for a long time. Either the arsenic or simply the good weather has had an excellent effect on him, and he is feeling much more fit and energetic. And this bustling activity shows how glad he is to be better. Yesterday he was on his feet from morning to night, and that evening he walked to the hospital, marvelling at the view in the moonlight. Today he got ready to leave for Yalta.
I wanted to help him pack so he wouldn’t exert himself, but he snapped at me so peevishly I almost burst into tears, and went off without saying a word.
I incline more and more to the view that every kind of sectarianism, including my husband’s teachings, tends to dry people’s hearts and make them proud. Two women I know well, his sister, Mashenka the nun, and his cousin Alexandra, have both become better, nobler people without leaving the Church.
My poor Tanya gave birth to another dead baby, a boy, on 12th November. She is even more devoted to her frivolous selfish husband. There is nothing left of her now, she has been completely absorbed by him; he allows himself to be loved, and loves her very little himself. Well, thank God if that is to her liking! We women are able to live for love alone, even when it’s not reciprocated. And even then one can live a full and active life!
Various pieces of news from Moscow and Yasnaya. Our affairs are being neglected, our friends are forgetting us; I am tantalized by all the wonderful recitals and symphony concerts, but it’s no use, I just have to sit here and mope.
8th December. Lev Nikolaevich didn’t return from Yalta today.
9th December. It’s just as I thought—Lev Nikolaevich has been taken ill in Yalta and his heart is irregular. I have just spoken to him on the telephone; he sounded quite cheerful, and said it was his stomach again; the long ride to Simeiz and back irritated his intestines. It must be the hundredth time he has done this. Just before he left he wolfed down some treats we had got for little Andryusha’s sixth birthday—some dumplings and grapes, a pear and some chocolate. And now look what happens. The moment he gets better he undoes everything with his immoderate appetite and activity. He takes fright, is treated, gets better, then ruins everything again…And so it goes on, in a vicious circle.
I went to church. The girls sang beautifully and I am in a happy, calm state of mind. Unlike other people I’m not bothered by foolishness like “with ranks of angels bearing spears” and “at the right hand of the Father” and so on. Above and beyond all this is the Church—the place that reminds us of God, where millions of people have brought their noble religious sentiments and their faith, the place where we bring all our griefs and joys, at every moment in our fickle lives.
13th December. Lyovochka’s niece Liza Obolenskaya and I took him back to Gaspra with us today.
At first, after drinking some coffee with milk, he was very lively, and this evening he played two games of chess with Sukhotin; then he felt weak and took to his bed. We had been urging him to go to bed all along as the doctor had ordered, but he wouldn’t listen.
The Sukhotins have had some bad news. Their Seryozha has fallen ill with typhus at Naval School, and they have been informed by telegram that his condition is serious. Tanya is wretched and has been weeping. She takes such a childish view of her fate; she thinks someone is forever out to hurt her.
We heard to our great joy today that a son, Ivan, had been born to Misha and Lina on the 10th. May my Vanechka inhabit this little boy’s soul and pray for him to grow up to be a happy, healthy child.
14th December. Lev Nikolaevich moved downstairs yesterday so as not to have to climb the stairs. His room next to mine is empty, and there is something ominous and poignant about the silence upstairs. I no longer have to put the washbasin down quietly on the marble table and tiptoe around and refrain from moving chairs.
Liza Obolenskaya is sleeping downstairs next to his room at present, and he gratefully accepts her help and is glad not to have to bother me.
15th December. Lyovochka has recovered now and we have all cheered up. He had dinner with us and walked as far as the gates of the estate.
He had a call from Doctor Altschule
r, who is treating him here, a pleasant, clever Jew, not at all like most Jews, whom Lev Nikolaevich trusts and likes. He was given his thirtieth arsenic injection today, and took five grains of quinine.
We have a Slovak Doctor Makovitsky* here, whom we have already met, accompanied by some Georgian called Popov, who is apparently a Tolstoyan.
23rd December. Lev Nikolaevich is fully recovered. He went for a long walk today, and looked in on Maxim Gorky*—or rather Alexei Peshkov; I dislike it when people write under assumed names. Lev Nikolaevich, Olga, Boulanger and I all came home in the carriage. It is fine, windy and warm—6°. He brought a large mauve-pink wild flower into the house and it has blossomed again. The almond tree is also trying to come into blossom, and the snowdrops are in flower. So beautiful! I am beginning to love the Crimea. My depression has lifted, thank God, mainly because he is better now.
24th December. This evening he played vint with his children and Klassen (the bailiff). They all shouted and got very worked up over a grand slam no trumps—I find this excitement over card games incomprehensible, shouting a lot of nonsense as if they’ve all lost their reason.
25th December. We had a festive Christmas. Lev Nikolaevich is better—his fever has passed and his arms aren’t hurting him.
26th December. We spent the evening at Klassen’s—German conversation, strange people and sweet food—not at all to my liking.
