The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year

by Jay Parini

  ‘So what is this you’re typing?’ she asked, casually. ‘Letters? A new story?’ The woman has no grace.

  ‘A nosy woman soon loses her nose,’ I said.

  ‘Alexandra Lvovna!’

  Whenever she wants to feign disapproval, she calls me by my Christian names. Even the servants around here call me Sasha. I am not pretentious.

  ‘He’s working with Bulgakov on For Every Day,’ I said. ‘You needn’t worry. He’s been saying nothing in print about you.’ We both know that Papa writes the truth about her in his diary. That’s why she wants to read it all the time, and why Papa tries to keep it hidden. It’s become a silly game of hide-and-seek.

  ‘You’ve become rude and unladylike,’ Mama said. ‘I don’t know why Papa makes you do all his dirty work,’ she added, gesturing toward the typewriter.

  ‘There’s nothing dirty about the work I do for Papa.’ I turned my back and began typing again.

  ‘Do you like Bulgakov?’

  ‘Well enough,’ I said. ‘He’s polite. A bit naive, perhaps. But he’s young.’ In fact, I find him disingenuous, even shifty. But I would not tell Mama such a thing. She is always looking for potential allies, and Bulgakov strikes me as one of those people who quickly turn the color of any room they enter.

  This past year Mama has become impossible, positively bleeding with jealousy and bourgeois rancor. Weeping, preening in the mirror, prowling about the house all night like a crazed animal! Papa does not deserve this. I cannot understand why God put this particular burden on Russia’s greatest author.

  Masha, my sister, was Papa’s favorite before she died. She always appeared to understand his ideas, though I doubt she did; still, it’s not worth criticizing the dead. Since she passed away, I have made myself indispensable to Papa, and he is grateful to me. He loves me now, much as I love him. Masha loved him, but she was weak. Her cheeks were pale as eggshells, her lips were always blue, quivering even when she was silent. She professed Tolstoyan values, including chastity, but how she tumbled into the arms of Obolensky, that fool, who was all fancy breeding with no cash to back it up. Papa cried at her wedding, but the tears were not joyful ones. I, on the other hand, have resolved to dedicate myself to Papa. I have read his books and, unlike most of those who surround him, I have understood them.

  And I will never marry. Why would the daughter of Leo Tolstoy wish to serve another man?

  Mama can hardly bear it that Papa lets me type his work. She used to recopy his manuscripts in that finicky hand of hers. She likes to recall how day after day, during the composition of Anna, she would wake up dreaming about Vronsky, Levin, Kitty, wondering what would next befall them.

  Sometimes I envy her those early days when Papa was fresh, writing novels and stories. But his work now is more important. Novels are bourgeois entertainment unless the author adopts a clear moral tone. This is why Papa dislikes William Shakespeare. ‘You can never tell where Shakespeare stands,’ Papa says. ‘He’s invisible. It is the duty of an author to present himself to the public. To say, this will do, and this will not do.’

  Papa adores the clean copy that I bring him every morning, though he quickly spoils it, scratching out words, putting in new phrases, whole sentences, and paragraphs in the margins or between lines. He likes to make balloons at the side, full of corrections that I’m supposed to understand and incorporate into further drafts. I hate when I have to creep into his study to ask for clarification. Of course, he’s infinitely patient. He thanks me every time, as if anyone wouldn’t be glad to do as much for Leo Tolstoy.

  I’m working late tonight, the lantern buzzing beside the typewriter, trying to finish today’s projects. What a day it has been! Sergeyenko’s father was here, one of Papa’s oldest friends. Father is always like a little boy around Sergeyenko, joshing and teasing. I love to see that. He brought us a gramophone for a gift, including a voice recording of Papa made some months before in Moscow. Mama put the record on that ghastly machine, with its brass horn and terrifying knobs. It was set up in the dining room on the table opposite the door, where everyone could gape at it. Our servants – the footmen, the cook, even a few stable boys – gathered in the hallway to listen. Some peered through the balustrade into the dining room as Papa’s voice boomed through the house in its queer distortion. It was Papa, yes. But it was not Papa. The glass vase on the mantel tingled to the point of shattering.

  The machine pleased everyone but Papa. I understood exactly why he crouched like that in the Voltaire chair, drawing himself inward like a turtle hiding within its shell.

  My brother Andrey came from Moscow, looking dapper, grating on Papa as usual with his chatter about countess this and colonel that. He cares nothing for his father’s feelings and knows little of his ideas. ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ Andrey kept saying, fussing with the gramophone to make it talk louder and louder.

  Papa said, ‘Like all foolish inventions of this so-called civilization, this machine will soon become a bore,’ and left the room.

  The remark upset Sergeyenko, whose father had brought the gramophone and the record in the first place. But he knows Papa and his ways.

  ‘Your father is something of a Luddite, I fear,’ he said, scratching his beard.

  Mama, bless her, immediately took Papa’s recording off the gramophone and put on a Glinka duet – also a gift from Sergeyenko. This brought Papa back into the room, smiling. He sat back in his chair, putting his hands on his knees and shutting his eyes. When the duet was finished, Mama put on another of the records we had been given: Ballinstin’s version of the serenade from Don Giovanni. Papa produced a wide smile that showed his pink, wet gums. ‘This is very nice,’ he said, patting his legs with both hands. ‘Very nice.’ Sergeyenko glowed.

  An hour later we gathered for tea. Mama had invited Bulgakov to stay. He seemed to gape at everyone and blew his nose repeatedly on a dirty handkerchief. I can hardly stand him and cannot imagine what Chertkov saw in him. Papa’s last secretary, Gusev, was ever so much better, a sincere man who understood Papa’s ideas better than Papa does himself. Even Chertkov said so.

  Andrey, like Mama a lover of discord, rambled on about patriotism, soon turning to the superiority of western Europe over Russia and questioning the proper relation of landowners to the muzhiks. Tanya’s husband, Sukhotin, grew excited and began to lecture about the price of land. When he finished his little address, Sergeyenko added that the Russian peasant has grown increasingly furious with landowners in the past decade, and rightly so. They deserve better treatment, he said, punctuating the air with a finger.

  ‘I have seen with my own eyes a whole village full of muzhiks thrashed by a small band of soldiers,’ Andrey replied, scanning the room to register the impact of his statement. ‘There must have been five hundred families on hand, but not one person objected. They’re sheep, the muzhiks. Nothing but sheep!’

  Papa’s eyes became dark pools. His brow wrinkled, and he seemed on the point of speaking when he restrained himself, knowing that whatever he said would be taken the wrong way. It grieved me to see this.

  ‘The muzhiks drink too much,’ Mama said, salting the wound in Papa’s heart. ‘The army is worth only what the government is willing to spend for them on alcohol. I’ve seen this proven by statistics.’ She sipped her glass of tea and lifted a plump little cake from the silver tray. ‘It’s certainly not for lack of land that the Russian muzhik leads a life of poverty,’ she added. ‘Their poverty is spiritual. They have no willpower.’

  Papa fastened his yellow knit jacket around his shoulders, as if a bitter wind had just blown through the house from the northern steppes. I saw by a flicker of his brow that he could no longer maintain a lofty silence.

  Smoothing his beard with one hand, he leaned forward. ‘If the peasants had money, they would not surround themselves, as we do, with footmen costing ten rubles a month. We behave like idiots.’

  ‘No, dear, they would spend it all on drink and whores,’ said Mama.


  Papa looked at her glumly.

  ‘You know, the Russian landowner finds himself in a filthy situation,’ Mama went on. ‘Do you think it’s impoverished landowners who treat themselves to all these modern gadgets, things like gramophones? Of course not. They’re bought by wealthy merchants living in the towns, by capitalists and plunderers!’ Mark Antony would not have addressed his troops less boldly.

  ‘What are you suggesting, dear?’ Papa asked. ‘That we are somehow less villainous than they because somebody gave us this gramophone as a gift?’

  He laughed, and everyone laughed with him, perhaps a little nervously.

  Meanwhile, Dr Makovitsky was scribbling everything Papa uttered on the tiny pad he keeps hidden beneath the table. You can tell when he is writing because his mouth twists and the lower lip protrudes queerly. I noticed that Valentin Bulgakov appeared quite agitated by what he saw. I don’t think he had ever heard my parents argue in public before, and it can be terribly upsetting if you’re not accustomed to it.

  ‘Dushan Petrovich!’ Papa said, shaking the doctor from his stenographic trance. ‘Bring me that letter from the revolutionary. The one I showed you a few days ago. I believe it’s still on my desk.’

  Papa read aloud from it to everyone. It was a curious thing to do, given the letter. One part of it stays in my head and haunts me.

  No, Leo Nikolayevich, I cannot agree with you that human relations are improved by love alone. Only those with an education and a full belly can talk like that and get away with it. What shall we say to a hungry man with children, the man who has staggered through life beneath the yoke of tyrants? He must fight them. He must liberate himself from bondage. Now, before your own death, I tell you, Leo Nikolayevich, that the world is thirsty for blood, that men will continue to fight and kill, not only their masters, but everyone, even their children, so that they shall not have to look forward to their evil as well. I am sorry that you will not live to see this with your own eyes and be convinced of your mistake. Nonetheless, I wish you a happy death.

  Andrey bowed his head over his glass, silenced. Mama said that since the letter came from Siberia, the man was probably a criminal in exile and his opinion should be dismissed.

  ‘He is certainly in exile,’ Papa said. ‘But I see no reason why he should be called a criminal.’

  ‘Why else would they send him to Siberia?’

  Papa shook his head. He rose with some difficulty, bowed, and took his leave of the company. It is his custom to retire to his study after tea, usually to read or correct proofs.

  I, too, left the room, though I felt no obligation to excuse myself. Politeness has its limits.

  Not long after, as I was typing, a shy knock came at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ I said.

  ‘You’re working late tonight, Sasha,’ said Bulgakov. His jacket was buttoned to the neck, and his beard was glossy. I realized in the yellow lamplight that he is not unattractive. His cheeks burned with the roseate hue of young manhood. I like the fact that his beard is wispy and guess that he does not have much hair on his chest. Indeed, there is something womanish about him, something tender and unformed.

  ‘I have four letters to finish before dinner,’ I told him, without rising. I wondered why he had come to me like this.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Certainly, Valentin Fedorovich. Sit down.’

  He pulled a cane chair up beside me, uncomfortably close, and looked over my shoulder. I could feel his breath on my shirt.

  ‘Do your parents often speak to each other so … bluntly?’ he asked.

  ‘It is no secret that my parents have fundamental differences,’ I said, trying to be judicious. In this household, you can never tell what will be repeated, or to whom. ‘Mama does not understand my father’s goals. He is a spiritual creature, while her chief concerns are material.’

  ‘But I like your mother.’

  ‘She means well, of course.’ I sounded insincere, but what was I to say? That Mama is irrational, false, and greedy, self-centered and generally impossible?

  ‘Your father is the greatest author in Russia today,’ Bulgakov said.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘I feel privileged to be here, Sasha. It is an honor I never dreamed of.’

  I simply nodded. It pleased me to hear my father referred to in these terms, however jejunely. The family takes his genius too much for granted.

  Bulgakov began talking of his family, his ambitions. He had been converted to Papa’s ideas through an acquaintance with a small group of Tolstoyans in Moscow, and now he hopes to live for God. The injustice of Russian society upsets him, he said. He was thoughtful and sincere. I really liked him, to my surprise. Unlike so many people around here, he has read Papa’s work carefully and found his own way to express many of the same ideas.

  Suddenly Mama marched into the room, shouting, ‘Valentin Fedorovich! Come downstairs. I must show you a letter I received only this past week from a woman in Georgia.’ She led him awkwardly from the room. He was embarrassed, but he did not have the sense – or the wherewithal – to resist her.

  That woman simply cannot bear it when anyone is alone with me. Let her read her ridiculous letter to young Bulgakov. He means nothing to me. I have my work before me, and this is enough.

  9

  Sofya Andreyevna

  If I’m in the right frame of mind, I actually like these wintry, overcast days when you live in a white cocoon. White cloud-scud sky, with snow hanging on the branches, meringue slices of clean, white snow. The ground is soft with the dust of snow, and your feet make a slight, muffled sound when you walk along the frozen paths. I like the blackbirds, too, and sparrows, so tenacious, enduring. Nothing scares them away. When I see blackbirds on the fence in the orchard, my heart fastens on them.

  There is something going on behind my back, something to do with the will. Yesterday, I asked Lyovochka directly, ‘Has anyone approached you about your will? Has anything changed? You would tell me, wouldn’t you, if anything happened?’

  He thinks he can give away everything we own: the house, the land, the copyright to all his works. Has he no sense of responsibility?

  ‘You mustn’t worry, Sonya,’ he said. ‘Nothing has happened.’ But I’m worried.

  Is it so much to ask for, that my husband’s children should inherit his property, including the right to republish his work as they see fit when he is gone? They, too, must live. It is some years since we agreed that I should maintain control over everything he wrote before 1881. I am happy enough to let the world take the rest, leaving me with Anna Karenina, War and Peace, and all the early novels – the only ones that keep selling anyway. It’s almost comical that my husband believes the later works matter beyond a small circle of religious fanatics. Who wants to read books of theological speculation? Books that tell you that you’ve been doing everything wrong through your whole life?

  I’ve been lying in bed with a headache, watching the snow fall, drinking tea. I cannot read. My head is tight as a drum, pounding. And I do not have the gramophone in my bedroom.

  Music has been my one escape, an island in this tilting sea around me. Had my life gone better, I would have been a professional pianist. Tanayev, my teacher, assured me that my talent would have been sufficient. But Lyovochka has denied me even this.

  He was impossible about Tanayev, so mean and jealous, like a silly schoolboy. My interest in that dear, sweet little man was entirely professional – or almost entirely. He is not, after all, an appealing man – not in any conventional way. He is short and porky, with red hair thinning on top; he refuses to trim that scrubby auburn beard of his. But his style! What style!

  Tanayev understands how a woman in society should be treated. Alas, it has been a long time since I have been around people who understand that, people such as the friends who would call on Papa – courtiers and generals, men of rank in society. No wonder I feel lonely here, in the wilds, surrounded by Goths.

  I remember seeing
Tanayev for the first time, on the stage in Kiev. Tanya and I went to that concert by chance, but we both knew at once that we were in the presence of genius. We wept madly when he played the Appassionata. After the concert, waiting for his carriage, the poor man was surrounded by screaming, foolish women. Pelagya Vasilievna, who had been his childhood nurse and now accompanied him everywhere like a doting grandmother, tried to push them away. But it was useless, such was their passion. One foolish girl grabbed his red silk kerchief, ripping it to shreds. I could not bear to see such a travesty and instructed our footman to do something.

  He walked bravely through the mob, shouting, ‘Make way for the Countess Tolstoy!’ Though embarrassed by the attention, I followed him. The crowd grew very still, and a path opened for me, almost miraculously, to the feet of Sergey Ivanovich. I felt like the Queen of the Ball.

  ‘It is a great honor,’ Tanayev said, kissing my hand.

  ‘You played marvelously well tonight,’ I said. ‘Especially the Appassionata. It is my favorite sonata.’

  ‘I thank you, Countess. Beethoven is not for everyone.’

  I invited him to ride in my carriage, since his was nowhere to be seen, and he graciously accepted.

  It was on the way to his hotel that I mentioned, in passing, that I, too, played the piano.

  ‘By comparison with you, of course, I’m a dreadful amateur,’ I said.

  ‘You do yourself an injustice, I’m sure,’ he said.

  ‘I wish that were true.’

  ‘Perhaps I could give you some lessons. Would that interest you, Countess?’

  ‘Me? You would instruct me?’

  Imagine! He was an impossibly dear man, taking on such a beginner. That night, I lay awake in bed quivering. I would be taught by the man who had himself been discovered at the age of ten by Nikolai Rubinstein! The man who became Tchaikovsky’s protégé and friend! The teacher of Scriabin! My luck, it seemed, was turning.