The Last Days of Tolstoy Part 4

CHAPTER V

THE LAST PERIOD

The last and most painful period of Leo Nikolaevitch's life at Yasnaya Polyana began in June 1910, when, on a visit at my summer bungalow at Meshtcherskoe, in the province of Moscow, he was suddenly summoned back to Yasnaya Polyana by a telegram from Sofya Andreyevna, informing him of her sudden illness; as it afterwards turned out, a sham one.

On his return to Yasnaya Polyana, Sofya Andreyevna surrounded his life with new restrictions, finally depriving him of even the limited share of personal freedom which he had until that time enjoyed. She gave up respecting his hours of literary work, for which she had once shown consideration, and by continually bursting in upon him and making scenes, she made it impossible for him to devote himself to the literary work in which he recognised his service to men. His daily walks had become his sole recreation and solace, and now she began to hinder him from going where he wished to go, and from taking with him those whom he wanted to take. She insisted that he should completely give up seeing those of his most intimate friends whose supposed influence on him she feared.[18] Even inside the house she subjected all his actions and conversations to a control which was never relaxed, not disdaining even the most indelicate methods, as, for instance, eavesdropping, with her shoes off at doors, and altogether watching day and night over every action he took. As has already been mentioned, she was demanding from him such an authorisation for the disposal of his works as would give her the power to take legal proceedings in connection with them, and to retain the copyright over a prolonged period in the future.

Apprehensive of what he might write in his diary, she tried to prevent his giving the ma.n.u.script books of his diary to anyone whatever, even to those whom he charged with work of one sort or another in connection with them, or in whose keeping he desired them to be preserved for the sake of greater security. She secretly stole from his pockets those very private diaries which he kept and carried about with him during the most painful periods of his life and scrupulously preserved from every human eye. Not only did she fail to conceal from him and others her distrust and--terrible to say--hatred for him, but openly in the hearing of all gave utterance to these feelings and often expressed them to him in so harsh a form that it brought on heart attacks and even fainting fits in him. She was jealous, or pretended to be jealous, of some of his most intimate friends, bound to him by the closest spiritual unity. In this connection also she openly expressed to those about her, and to outsiders and to Leo Nikolaevitch himself, such incredibly revolting suspicions as the tongue cannot bring itself to repeat, thereby reducing Leo Nikolaevitch almost to complete collapse and driving him to lock all the doors of his room. And with all this she did everything she could to prevent his going away from Yasnaya Polyana, even for the briefest visits which might have enabled him to have at least some rest from the atmosphere of his home, and to gain fresh strength to endure further tortures.

All these requests and others similar to them Sofya Andreyevna did not merely put in words before Leo Nikolaevitch, but if he refused, tried by her whole behaviour to force him against his will to submit to her.[19] For this purpose she resorted to simulated fits of hysteria and madness, threatened to commit suicide, pretended that she would swallow or had swallowed poison, ran half dressed out of doors in the rain or snow or at night, making them search for her all over the park, and running in to him at any time of the day or the night, even when, utterly exhausted, he had dropped asleep, and waking him up with the object of worrying the concessions she wanted out of him. There is no recounting all the unutterably cruel means to which she unhesitatingly resorted for the sake of forcibly compelling him. And when the members of her family told her that she would kill him by such conduct, she answered coldly that his soul had long been dead for her and that she did not care for his body; and if she were asked what she would do and how she would feel if he really did die of her treatment, she would say, "I shall go at last to Italy; I have never been there."

Leo Nikolaevitch for his part, so long as he thought it right to remain with his wife, tried with strikingly touching meekness to gratify all her wishes and to comply with all her demands which did not run counter to his conscience. When he considered them unreasonable, at first he refused, but as she obstinately insisted and resorted to her usual methods, in the end he often gave way in those cases also; at one time regarding her as quite insane, and being apprehensive that in a moment of frenzy she really might do herself some mischief.

He was only unhesitating in his resistance when his conscience told him that he ought not to give way. Thus, in spite of all Sofya Andreyevna's importunities and strategy, he made his will and did not change it to the end; he did not give her the authority to take legal proceedings; he did not hand over his diaries to her, but put them in a place of safety (in the bank at Tula). But since what was most necessary for her object was just that in which he found it impossible to give way to her, it was precisely with these demands that she persecuted him most. And so all his concessions, instead of pacifying her, only encouraged her in more persistent importunities and still more cruel means of oppression.

FOOTNOTES

[18] The members of Tolstoy's household who were most intimate with him--Alexandra Lvovna Tolstoy, D. P. Makovitsky and Varvara Mihailovna Feokritova--were convinced that Sofya Andreyevna's hatred of me was a sham. This is proved, for instance, by the following extract from Makovitsky's diary:

"While I was riding with Leo Nikolaevitch to-day, I was thinking of Sofya Andreyevna's behaviour since June 24, and I came to the conclusion that in reality she is not, and never has been, jealous of Tchertkoff. She pretended to be jealous simply in order to separate him from Leo Nikolaevitch, and prevent him from influencing Leo Nikolaevitch; she thought it was due to Tchertkoff's influence that Leo Nikolaevitch wanted to give away his works to the public....

"And how well she played the part and deceived L. N., Tchertkoff, Tatyana Lvovna, and me (we were all convinced that she was jealous of Tchertkoff). I spoke of this to-day, and Varvara Mihailovna and Alexandra Lvovna answered that they had noticed the same thing long ago (that is, that there was no jealousy), and had put it down in their diaries" (October 13, 1910).

[19] D. P. Makovitsky records the following incident:

"The day before yesterday she made a scene again: fell at Leo Nikolaevitch's feet and begged him to give her the keys of the safe in the bank where his diaries or the will were kept. Leo Nikolaevitch said that he could not do it and went out. As he pa.s.sed under her windows Sofya Andreyevna leaned out and cried, 'I have taken opium.'

Leo Nikolaevitch rushed upstairs to her, but she met him with the words, 'That was not true, I did not take any.' This scene upset Leo Nikolaevitch very much, and he said to Sofya Andreyevna, 'You are doing all you can to make me leave home.' After this he had palpitations and almost fainted. He had attempted to run up the stairs, and during those moments of terror and agitation was living through his wife's death" (July 19, 1910)

CHAPTER VI

MENTAL AGONY

It will be readily understood that no health could hold out against such torments lasting over several months at a stretch, no less severe, it may be said, than the tortures of the Inquisition, and exceeding them in their uninterrupted persistence and prolongation.

And indeed, returning to Yasnaya in a vigorous and excellent state of health, Leo Nikolaevitch began visibly fading away before her eyes in the nightmare period of the last months of his life: in the course of a few weeks he looked so old and drawn, so weak and thin, so pale and in every respect so physically run down as to be unrecognisable. In the course of those months he had several attacks of faintness. By the day of his departure he looked only the shadow of himself: his heart, his nerves, all his forces were utterly undermined, and of course, under such conditions, the slightest ailment was sure to carry him off, as happened indeed with the first cold he chanced to catch immediately after he went away.

All Sofya Andreyevna's conduct during those last months of their life together revealed to Leo Nikolaevitch much in her that he had never noticed before. He was not only led to doubt of his cherished dream of softening her heart by his all-forgiving love; he began even to feel uncertain whether he were doing her harm or good by being near her, and whether the doctors were not right who in her interests advised them to live apart.[20] And in the end he became convinced that his presence really was a direct incitement to evil for her, calling out and accentuating all the worst sides of her character.

Speaking of his departure with that same Novikov a week before it took place, Leo Nikolaevitch said: "For my own sake I have not done this and could not do it, but now I see that it would be better for my family, there would be less dispute among them on my account, less sin."

Another reason that had previously restrained him from going away lay in the fact that he considered that the ordeal to which he was continually exposed in his wife's company was profitable for his own soul, and found in it a spiritual satisfaction. But in the end Sofya Andreyevna, as she herself expressed it after his death, "overdid it"

in her behaviour with him, putting him in such a position that instead of satisfaction he began to experience the sense of awkwardness and shame which one feels in taking part in something unbecoming, unseemly. Two days before he went away he wrote to me: "I feel something _unbefitting, something shameful_ in my position." And in the letter to Alexandra Lvovna the day after he went away he says: "I do not feel _that shame, that awkwardness_, that lack of freedom which I always used to feel at home." In his last letter to Sofya Andreyevna from Shamardino he states even more definitely that to return to her when she is in such a state of mind would be equivalent to committing suicide, and he did not consider that he had a right to do that. So by now he no longer believed that staying with Sofya Andreyevna was profitable for his own soul, and recognised it as undesirable.

In the course of the later years his hesitation had increased with every day, and at times he seemed to be on the very point of flight.[21] He only stayed through not feeling as yet that irresistible impulse which, as he so well recognised, was _essential_ in order that he might take this momentous step, not through rational considerations alone, but with all his soul, confidently and inevitably. And so long as this impulse was lacking and he was more or less weighing the _pros_ and _cons_ of his departure, the consideration that for him personally to go away would be a relief, and that there would be more self-sacrifice in remaining, retained its force. Thus I have been told that two days before his departure, when he informed his old friend, the old lady Marya Alexandrovna Schmidt (who, by the way, later on fully understood and approved his departure), that he thought of leaving Yasnaya Polyana, and she thereupon exclaimed: "Leo Nikolaevitch darling, it will pa.s.s, it is a moment's weakness," he hastened to reply: "Yes, yes, I know that it is a weakness and I hope that it will pa.s.s."

So that in spite of the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch had now become aware of a new phase in Sofya Andreyevna's relations to him, which in reality removed any reasonable purpose in his remaining at her side, and justified his departure, since his presence was becoming bad for her and unprofitable for him, nevertheless he still lingered on, dreading to act prematurely, and as it were waiting for the last decisive shock.

And this shock was not long in coming with startling abruptness.

FOOTNOTES

[20] At the advice of all his friends and members of his household Leo Nikolaevitch went in September to stay with his daughter Tatyana Lvovna Suhotin (at Kotchety) in order to have a rest from family scenes. But Sofya Andreyevna would not leave him in peace even there. This is what we read in Makovitsky's diary:

"This is the third day that Sofya Andreyevna is perfectly frantic.

Leo Nikolaevitch sent me to her several times during the day; in the morning she was in her room; she complained of headache and said that she had taken no food for two days; in the afternoon she ran off into the garden.

"Sofya Andreyevna spent the whole day by herself in the park. Leo Nikolaevitch sent me to find her.

"'Oh, Dushan Petrovitch!' he said to me, 'it's worse than ever; everything is going to the worst. Sofya Andreyevna insists that I should go away with her. But I simply cannot do it, for her demands go _crescendo_ and _crescendo_. I don't know what to do!'" (September 11, 1910, Kotchety.)

[21] Thus in D. P. Makovitsky's diary we read:

"Leo Nikolaevitch spoke to Alexandra Lvovna of how heavy their family atmosphere was, and said that if it had not been for her he would have gone away. He is on the alert. Yesterday morning he asked me what were the morning trains to the south. He had said to Marya Alexandrovna, and before that to us, that he has not been able to work for the last four months and that Sofya Andreyevna keeps running in to him, and always suspecting that some secrets are being concealed from her, written doc.u.ments and conversations"

(October 26, 1910).

CHAPTER VII

THE NIGHT OF TOLSTOY'S GOING AWAY

It happened very simply. On the night of the 27th October, at a time when it was supposed that Leo Nikolaevitch was asleep, as he lay in bed he heard and saw through a crack in his door Sofya Andreyevna steal softly into his study and search among the papers on his writing-table. Then as she was going away, noticing the light in his room, she went in and began with an anxious face inquiring how he was. This cold hypocrisy on her part apparently destroyed the last illusion of Leo Nikolaevitch. Only a few days before he had been touched by the solicitude with which Sofya Andreyevna, coming into his bedroom in the same way at night, had climbed on to a chair and had set right the movable frame which had been insecurely fastened.

Now he remembered that he had heard a rustle the night before too, and the real value of Sofya Andreyevna's care of him was suddenly revealed to him. Chance had unmasked the awful, systematic comedy which was being played from day to day around him, and in which he had unconsciously to play the central part.

In his diary he describes what he endured that night as follows:--

"I went to bed at half-past eleven, slept till three o'clock. Woke again. As on previous nights, the opening of doors and footsteps. On the previous nights I did not look towards my door; this time I glanced towards it and saw through the crack a bright light in the study and heard rustling. It was Sofya Andreyevna looking for something, probably reading something. On the evening before she begged and insisted that I should not lock the doors. Both her doors were opened so that she could hear my slightest movement. Both by day and by night all my movements and my words must be known to her and be under her control. Again footsteps, a cautious opening of the door and she goes out. I don't know why that aroused in me an irrepressible repulsion and indignation. I tried to go to sleep. I could not; I turned from side to side for about an hour, lighted a candle and sat up. The door opens and Sofya Andreyevna walks in, asking after my health and wondering at the light which she has seen in my room. Repulsion and indignation grow. I am breathless; I count my pulse seventy-seven. I cannot lie still, and suddenly take a final resolution to go away. I write her a letter; I begin packing what is most necessary, only to get away. I wake Dushan, then Sasha; they help me to pack."

As Alexandra Lvovna described, she and her companion Varvara Mihailovna (the amanuensis) were awake that night. She kept fancying that someone was walking about and talking overhead. She was afraid that discussions were taking place between her father and mother.

They fell asleep towards morning, but soon heard a knock at the door.

Alexandra Lvovna went to the door and opened it.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"It is I, Leo Nikolaevitch.... I am going away at once ... for good.... Come and help me pack."

Alexandra Lvovna said afterwards that she would never forget his figure in the doorway, in a blouse, with a candle in his hand and a bright face resolute and beautiful.

In haste to get away, Leo Nikolaevitch dreaded one thing only: that Sofya Andreyevna might come upon him before he succeeded in getting off, and the calm realisation of his unalterable decision might thereby be troubled.