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

by Jay Parini

  It seems that in Moscow, by law, all beggars (of whom one meets several in each street, with rows of them outside every church whenever there is a service, especially if there happens to be a funeral) are forbidden to beg.

  But I never did find out why some are caught and detained, while others roam freely. Either there are legal and illegal beggars, or there are so many that they can’t catch all of them; perhaps as soon as some are caught, others spring up.

  Moscow presents all kinds of beggars. There are some who live by it; and there are others, ‘real’ beggars, who have come to the town for some reason and are genuinely destitute.

  Among these latter are many simple muzhiks, men and women alike, wearing muzhik clothes. I often meet them. Some of them have fallen ill here and have been let out of the hospital; they can neither support themselves nor get away from Moscow. Some are not ill but have lost everything they own in a fire, or are elderly, or are women with children. Others are healthy and able to work. These healthy ones, begging alms, interested me especially. For since I came to Moscow I had, for the sake of exercise, formed the habit of going to work at the Sparrow Hills with two muzhiks to saw wood there.

  These two men were just like those I’d met in the streets. One was Peter, a soldier from Kaluga; the other was Simon, a muzhik from Vladimir. They owned nothing except the clothes on their backs and their own hands. With those hands they earned a tiny sum per day, something of which they were able to save: Peter to buy a sheepskin coat, Simon to pay for the journey back to his village. I was especially keen to talk to them.

  Why did these men work and others beg?

  On meeting such a fellow I usually began by asking how he came to be in such a state. Once I met a healthy muzhik whose beard was turning gray. He begged. I asked who he was, and he said he had come from Kaluga to look for work. At first he had found some work, cutting up old timber for firewood. He and his mate cut up all the wood in one spot. Then he searched for another job, but nothing could be found. His mate left him, and now he had been knocking around for two weeks, having eaten all he had, and he had nothing with which to buy either a saw or a chopper. I gave him money for the saw and told him where he could find work. (I had previously, as it happened, arranged with Peter and Simon to take on another worker.)

  ‘So, my friend, be sure and go. There is plenty of work for you there,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Why not? Do you think I enjoy begging? I can work.’

  He swore he’d go, and I felt he was in earnest and meant to appear.

  The next day I joined my friends, Peter and Simon, and asked if the man had turned up. He had not. As it happened, several other men behaved in much the same way. I was also cheated by men who said they only needed money to buy a railway ticket home, but whom I met on the street again a week later. Several of these I recognized, and they recognized me; but sometimes, having forgotten me, they told me the same story again. Some turned away on seeing me. So I learned that among this class there are many cheats, too; but I felt extremely sorry for these cheats. They were a half-dressed, thin, impoverished, sickly group: the sort of people who often freeze to death or hang themselves, as we often read in the papers.

  When I spoke to the Moscovites about this destitution in their city I was usually told: ‘What you have seen is nothing! Go to Hitrof Market and visit the doss houses. That’s where you’ll see the real “Golden Company.”’ One fellow told me, somewhat dryly, that it was no longer a ‘Company’ but a ‘Golden Regiment’ – there are so many of them. The man was right, but he’d have been even more correct had he said that in Moscow these people are now neither a company nor a regiment but a vast army that numbers, I am told, fifty thousand. Old residents of Moscow, when speaking of town poverty, always spoke of it with a kind of pleasure – as if proud to know about it. I recall, too, that when I was in London, people there bragged about London pauperism: ‘Just look what it’s like here!’ they said.

  I wanted to see this destitution, about which I’d been told; and several times I set out toward Hitrof Market, but each time I felt uncomfortable and ashamed. ‘Why go to look on the sufferings of people I can’t help?’ a voice within me said. ‘If you live here and see all the allurements of town life, go and see that, too,’ said another voice. And so, one frosty, windswept day in December 1881, I went to the heart of the town’s destitution – Hitrof Market. It was a weekday, almost four o’clock in the afternoon. In Solyanka Street I had already become aware of more and more people wearing strange clothes not made for them, and in yet stranger footgear – people with an odd, unhealthy complexion, all possessing a common air, an air of indifference. I noticed one man walking alone rather casually, dressed in strange, incredible clothes, evidently unfazed by what he looked like to others. All proceeded in the same direction. Without asking the way (which I didn’t know), I went with them, arriving eventually at the Hitrof Market.

  There were also women of the same type, adorned in all sorts of capes, cloaks, jackets, boots, and galoshes, equally indifferent to appearances in spite of the hideousness of their garb. Old and young, they sat exchanging goods of some sort, milling about, swearing and scolding. There were few people in the market. It was apparently over, and most were walking uphill, passing through or past the market, always in one direction. I followed them, and the farther I went the more people there seemed to be, all going one way. Passing the market and following up the street, I overtook two women: one old, the other young. Both wore tattered, drab clothes. Neither was drunk. Something, however, preoccupied them, and the men who met them, as well as those behind and before them, paid no attention to their manner of speech, which to my ears was peculiar. It was evident that, here, people always talked like this.

  To the left were private doss houses, and some turned into them, while others went farther on. Having climbed the hill, we came to a large house on the corner. Most of those among whom I had been walking stopped here. All along the sidewalk and in the snow-covered street, people of the same type stood or sat. To the right of the entrance door were the women, to the left the men. I passed both the women and the men (there were hundreds of them), and stopped where the line ended. The house they were waiting for was the Lyapinsky Free Night-Lodging House. The crowd were lodgers waiting for admission. At 5:00 p.m. the doors open, and people are let in. Nearly all those I had overtaken were coming here.

  When I stopped, where the lines of men ended, those nearest began to stare at me, drawing me to them by their glances. The tatters covering their bodies were extremely varied, but they all looked at me with the same stare, as if to say: ‘Why have you, a man from a different world, stopped among us? Who are you? A self-satisfied rich man who wants to enjoy our misery, to kill time, to torture us – or are you that thing which can hardly exist – someone who pities us?’ These questions hung on every face. They looked, caught my eye, and turned away. I wanted to speak to some of them but could not decide what to do. Nevertheless, as widely as life had separated us, having exchanged glances I felt that we were similar, that we ceased to be afraid of one another.

  Near me stood a fellow with a swollen face and a red beard, in a torn coat with worn galoshes on his bare feet. (And it was well below freezing!) I met his look three or four times, and felt so near him that instead of being ashamed to speak to him, I should have been ashamed not to say something. So I asked where he came from. He answered readily and began talking, while others drew near. He was from Smolensk and had come to seek work, hoping to be able to buy corn and pay his taxes. ‘There is no work to be had,’ he said. ‘The soldiers have taken all the work. So I’m wandering about, and, as God knows, I haven’t eaten for two days!’ He spoke timidly, trying to smile. A seller of hot drinks (made of honey and spices) stood nearby. I called him, and he poured out a glass. The man took the drink in his hands and tried to contain the heat as he cupped his hands around the glass. While doing so, he told me about his adventures (the adventures or stories told by th
ese men were almost all the same). He had had a little work, but it came to an end; then his purse, with his passport and what money he had, had been stolen, right here in the Lyapinsky House. Now he couldn’t get away from Moscow. He said that during the day he warmed himself in the drink shops and ate scraps of bread, which were sometimes given to him; but often they drove him away. He got his night’s lodging free here. He was now only waiting for the police to arrest him for having no passport, to imprison him or send him on foot, under escort, back to his native town. ‘They say there will be a police search on Thursday,’ he said. Prison or escort home were, for him, the Promised Land.

  As he was talking, two or three others from among the crowd confirmed his words and said they were in the same mess. A skinny kid, pale, long nosed, with nothing over his shirt (which had a tear at the shoulder) and wearing a peakless cap, pushed his way sidelong to me through the crowd. He shivered violently all over, but he tried to smile contemptuously at the beggar’s speech, hoping thereby to adapt himself to my attitude. He looked me in the eye, and I offered him, too, a hot drink. On taking the glass he also warmed both hands around it, but he had only begun to speak when he was pushed aside by a big, black, Roman-nosed fellow in a print shirt and a vest but wearing no cap. The Roman-nosed man also asked for a hot drink, followed by a tall, drunken old man with a pointed beard who wore an overcoat tied around the waist with a cord and bast shoes. Then came along a dwarfish fellow with puffy cheeks and watery eyes who wore a brown nankeen pea jacket; his bare knees poked through the holes in his summer trousers and knocked together from the cold. He shivered so badly he could hardly hold the glass and spilled the contents all over himself. The rest began to abuse him, but he only smiled rather pitifully and shivered. Then came a crooked, deformed man in rags, with strips of linen tied round his bare feet; then something that looked like an officer, then something that looked like a cleric, then something strange and noseless: all were hungry, freezing, importunate, and submissive, drawing round me and pressing near the seller of hot drinks, who dispatched what he had till all was gone.

  One man asked for money, and I gave him some. Another asked, then a third, and soon the whole crowd besieged me. Disorder and a crush ensued. A porter from the next house shouted to the mob to get off the sidewalk, and they submissively obeyed his command. Organizers appeared among the crowd, and they took me under their protection. They hoped to extricate me from the crush, but the crowd, which at first had stretched in a line along the sidewalk, had gathered around me in a circle. They implored me with their looks, begging. Each face was more pitiful, more jaded, more degraded than the last. I gave away everything I had with me, which was not much, and followed the crowd into the Night-Lodging House.

  It was an immense building, consisting of four stories. On the top story were the men’s lodgings and, on the lower stories, the women’s. First, I entered the women’s quarters: a big room filled with bunks, arranged in two tiers, above and below. Women old and young – bizarrely dressed, ragged, with no outdoor garments – entered and took possession of their bunks. Some of the older ones crossed themselves and prayed for the founder of this refuge. Others merely laughed and swore.

  I went upstairs to the men’s lodging. Among them I saw a man whom I had just given money. Seeing him, I felt suddenly ashamed, dreadfully so, and hurried away. Feeling as if I had committed a crime, I left the house and went home. There I entered the carpeted, elegant hallway of my house. Taking off my fur coat, I sat down to a five-course dinner. Five lackeys with white ties and white gloves served me the meal.

  Thirty years ago, in Paris, I once saw how, in the presence of thousands of spectators, they cut a man’s head off with a guillotine. I knew he was a horrible criminal, and I knew all the arguments written in defense of that kind of action. I also knew his crime was done deliberately and intentionally. But at the moment the head and body separated, with the head toppling into the box, I gasped and realized not with my mind but with my heart and my whole soul that all the arguments in favor of capital punishment are wicked nonsense and that however many people may combine to commit murder – the worst of all crimes – and whatever they may call themselves, murder remains murder. I knew that a crime had been committed before my eyes, and that I, by my very presence and nonintervention, had approved and shared in that crime.

  In the same way now, at the sight of the hunger, cold, and degradation of thousands of people, I understood not only with my mind or heart but with my very soul that the existence of tens of thousands of such people in Moscow – while I and thousands of others gorge ourselves on beefsteaks and sturgeon and cover our horses and floors with cloth or carpets – no matter what all the learned men in the world may say about its necessity, is a crime, and one committed not once but constantly. I knew that I, with my luxury, shared fully the responsibility for this crime.

  29

  Sasha

  Papa fell asleep over his diaries, and I didn’t dare wake him. I glanced at what he had written: ‘I feel that I should go away, leaving a letter, but I’m afraid for Sonya, though I suppose it would benefit her, too.’

  My hand was trembling. I turned the page and read: ‘Help me, O God, universal spirit, origin and point of life, help me, at least now in these last days and hours of my life on earth, help me to serve Thee, to live for Thee alone.’

  I closed the diary so that Mama wouldn’t see. I couldn’t bear another bout of hysteria.

  Papa, on the other hand, is not hysterical, though Andrey and Leo, my brothers, have been talking in the most distressing way about having a doctor declare Papa feebleminded. What they fear, of course, is the secret will. The disposition of Papa’s manuscripts and diaries preoccupies them. They are so money grubbing! Everything they do is calculated to sustain the luxury they adore.

  The gloom of it all overwhelmed me, so I went into Varvara’s room. She cradled me in her arms, saying, ‘One or the other will die soon. You can count on that much. Time plays a useful function here.’

  She is right, of course. The physical effects of my parents’ struggle have grown obvious to everyone. Mama’s pulse races frantically, while Papa is barely able to cross the room some days. Pale, unsteady on his feet, he is often confused. Somehow, he continues to ride Delire in the afternoons. That horse will kill him if the tension doesn’t.

  One day Papa told me about an old man who had become weary of life and whose family had grown weary of him. Saying nothing, the man saddled his horse and rode off at dawn into the misty woodlands, never to be seen again.

  ‘Papa, you would never …’

  ‘I can’t say what I would or wouldn’t do,’ he replied.

  I walked away from this conversation less horrified than awestruck. I felt sure that, whatever came between him and Mama, he would behave in a reasonable manner – even if everyone called him insane.

  Tanya, my saintly sister, heard about the latest marital brushfires and decided to visit us. She is like a wandering bucket in search of a fire. But her generally beneficent temper has good effects on the household. Papa seems able to relax when she is here.

  ‘Your sister is so deliciously stupid,’ Varvara Mikhailovna said to me this morning, over breakfast. ‘She makes everyone else feel intelligent. That’s why she is popular.’

  The current state of siege at Yasnaya Polyana shook my sister up so badly she insisted that we all return to Kochety with her. The atmosphere there is always restorative, what with Sukhotin’s genial pompousness and Tanya’s ministrations, the tinkle of children’s voices, the beautifully kept grounds and French cuisine. Kochety has the additional advantage of being out of Chertkov’s immediate range just now, which should increase my mother’s sense of well-being.

  With very little discussion, everyone agreed to go. Yasnaya Polyana has become an emotional torture chamber.

  We left for Kochety in mid-August, on a hazy day, in two carriages. I rode with Varvara Mikhailovna and Dushan Makovitsky in a cramped carriage with four tr
otters. My parents rode together in the first carriage with Tanya and a couple of servants. Everything went beautifully for three days, with Mama more relaxed than I have seen her in many months. There was not a word of animosity between her and Papa! Then, on the eighteenth of August, an article appeared in the local newspaper saying that the minister of the interior had granted Chertkov permanent residence in Tula.

  Mama came into the breakfast room with the paper clutched in her hand like a strangled animal. ‘I will have Chertkov murdered. Either he dies, or I die. There can be no compromise.’

  Papa’s face turned to chalk. ‘You all see what I endure,’ he shouted. ‘It’s … impossible!’

  Mama glared at him, then fell hard onto the wide-plank floor-boards, hitting her head on the molding. A new maid screamed. Dushan Makovitsky hastened to Mama’s side and immediately took her pulse.

  ‘One hundred forty,’ he said. ‘Not serious.’ Rather too casually, he slapped her cheeks before putting salts to her nose.

  Mama opened her eyes, slightly.

  ‘Sofya!’ Dushan said, loudly. ‘Open your eyes!’

  ‘My chest … my chest,’ she gasped, trying to catch her breath. ‘I have such a terrible pain. My heart! It’s my heart!’ She fell back with her eyes closed. Sarah Bernhardt could not have done better.

  ‘Is she dying?’ Tanya asked.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Dushan said. ‘It’s a mild case of shock.’

  Mama was carried to her room by two young footmen in uniform, swinging between them like a large hammock. She was propped up in bed, pillows all around her.

  I sat beside her with Papa, who smoldered still and volunteered nothing – not a word, not even a sigh. When Mama recovered consciousness, she seemed eerily calm, as radiant as a queen. She asked Papa to promise not to have himself photographed by Chertkov anymore.