|
After my articles (of which this book is in part a translation) were published in Paris in the russian magazines "Sovremenniye Zapiski" and "Posledniye Novosti", a number of critical articles appeared in the
émigré press. Some of them were favorable, others censured me for discussing the relations between my parents. I think that the latter right. I did not want to publish the articles. I was obliged to do it, and I could not possibly avoid speaking about the events that took place in our family. The reason why I had to write everything quite frankly was that the diaries of my mother had been published.
During her life she was always afraid that people would accuse her of having been a bad wife, of not participating in father's ideas, of making his life bitter. Trying to justify herself, she involuntarily made accusations against father. Thus, the diary, without being, I am sorry to say, thoroughly reliable, has caused the publication of a number of books and articles unfavorable to him. I felt that it was my duty to tell people what I knew, for I was the only one who stayed with my parents during the last years. If I died, nobody could tell the story. Father himself did not say much about his family life, and my mother carefully scratched out of his diaries everything he wrote about her.
The well-known translator of father's works and friend of our family, Aylmer Maude, wrote to me:
[Aylmer Maude writes] I am glad your book will be
published in America. Since your mother's "Diary" was
published, many reviewers and writers, basing themselves
on statements in it, have written in a very denunciatory
matter about your father. The fact that he was so
scrupulously careful not to speak harshly about your
mother renders the available evidence one-sided and many
readers are misled! It is therefore very desirable that
you, who were the nearest witness of their last years
together, should tell the facts of the case even more
explicitly, if possible, than you have done in your
articles published in Paris.
It was, I think, a mistake to publish mother's diaries. It sometimes occurs to me that if she were alive she would never have done it. I often heard her say that she was going to leave a will to the effect that the diaries should not be published until fifty years after her death.
There was a great change in mother after father died. She suddenly became a mild, gentle old woman. She sat for hours, dozing in a big armchair, and woke up only when someone mentioned father's name. She would sigh and begin speaking about how sorry she was for having made him suffer. "I really think I was insane," she said.
After the Revolution, she lost everything, but she never complained. She seemed strangely indifferent to money, luxury, things she liked so much before. She died in 1919 of inflammation of the lungs. My sister Tanya and I took care of her for eleven days. She suffered but was very patient and kind to everybody. When she understood that she was dying, she called my sister and me. "I want to tell you," she said, breathing heavily and interrupted by spasms of coughing, "I know that I was the cause of your father's death. I repented deeply. But I loved him all my life long and I was always a faithful wife to him."
My sister and I could not speak. We were both crying. We knew that mother was telling us the truth.
Alexandra Tolstoy. Newtown Square, Pennsylvania January 13, 1933
We are playing lotto. Father enters, his hands behind his leather belt, and looks at us smiling. I feel a great desire to make him like me.
I cannot read yet, but know by heart the inscriptions under all the pictures in my book and pretend to read aloud -- "The spruce is always green," and "The June bug is brown" -- at the same time looking sideways to see what impression it makes on him. He is laughing.
Everything that surrounded father seemed especially important: his study with the vaulted ceiling into which big rings were screwed; [Footnote: It was said that in the days when Prince N. S. Volkonskiy owned the house this had been a storeroom and hams were hung on those rings in the ceiling.] the desk, the big, old- fashioned armchair -- so long that one could stretch out in it as if in a bed; and the peculiar smell, perhaps of leather and perhaps of old paper, which emanated from all his things. It could not possibly occur to me to take a pencil away from his desk or to draw a smiling or a melancholy pig on one of the scraps of paper that littered it.
What a joyous event it was when father played with us! All of a sudden, after dinner, he would call, "Little ones, come along!" We excitedly run and skip after him to his study. In the corner, near grandfather's old-fashioned red washstand, stands a laundry basket. Father throws some rags out of it. "Get in! Who's first?" Vanichka goes in first, because he is the younger. The lid is closed and the basket is carried by father with the help of one of the family or a house guest. Usually this is the task of Aleksandr Nikiforovich Dunayev -- Nikiforych as we call him -- a friend of the family who is very fond of Vanichka and me. Vanichka in the laundry basket is being carried all over the house, I am running after. Finally the basket is deposited in some unusual place -- under the table or on the dresser or in some dark corner. "Vanichka, now guess where you are!" But Vanichka cannot guess, he is too little for that; he only likes to have a ride.
Then comes my turn. I pack myself into the basket with difficulty, with feet folded under. I feel awkward, suffocated, and a little scared. The basket sways softly and evenly; because it is being tilted a little, I believe that we are going downstairs. I am trying with all my might to guess the direction. The basket swings upward, there is a jolt, my head knocks against its side, and father's voice says loudly, "Well, now, guess where you are."
"In the maid's room!" I shout.
"No, you haven't guessed,"
I crawl out, stand up, and look around. What is this? For a moment it seems to me that I am in a strange place. It is half dark, there is a window and it is grated. "Papa's study!" I shout at the top of my lungs, opening the curtains which they had drawn on purpose. Nikiforych lifts me up and lets me down to the floor. "Well, little ones, that will do for today," father says. We do not pester him for more, as we would nurse or mother, but run back to our room overjoyed.
When father leaves his study a little early for dinner, he likes to play with us. He carries us in his arms, makes us turn somersaults, and bears us on his shoulders.
Presently the whole family is assembled in the dining-room; only mother is missing. the soup and the soup pastry are getting cold, but no one sits down; we wait for the lady of the house. then we hear mother's voice and the rustling of her silk skirts. "One, two, three, quick -- all under the table!" father commands. In the twinkling of an eye, sisters, brothers, guests, the English governess, all are under the table. We sit there and silently choke with laughter so that it hurts in the pit of the stomach. "But where is everybody?" mother inquires, looking wonderingly around the empty room with her shortsighted eyes. "I cannot tell, Your Excellency," the waiter answers, and suddenly, turning his face away and covering his mouth with his white-gloved hand, he snorts. Uproarious laughter echoes from under the table, and we all emerge. You always invent some foolishness, Lyovochka," says mother, and shakes with laughter.
Another time, father pulled the rug from under the round table in the drawing room, had us sit down on it, took up one end of it, and gave us a ride around the table. The rug glided along like a sled, and we rode rapturously on it. But the game soon ended. Mother came, saw the drawing room in disorder and her favorite rug being maltreated, scolded father, had the rug put back in its place, and forbade our touching it.
I remember father's walking ahead, while we, our hands joined in a chain, follow him on tiptoe, holding our breath. He leads us through the darkest rooms and staircases, visiting every dark corner. "Quiet, quiet," father whispers, "HE'll hear us!" We are half dead with fright. This imagined "HE" may pounce upon us any moment and seize us. Silently, not daring to breathe, with noiseless steps, we steal ahead. "Sh-sh-sh!" we hiss at each other. "Quiet, sh-sh-sh!" "Here HE is!" father cries out suddenly. shrieking madly, we run out of the room. Father runs ahead of us all.
I remember dimly how, in 1889, the "Fruits of Enlightenment" (Plody Porsveshcheniye) was staged at Yasnaya Polyana [Footnote: Our country home, about one hundred and thirty miles south of Moscow.] by our family and friends. In the dining room, on the
right-hand side of the entrance, a stage was arranged. It was dark. Chairs were placed in rows. There was a big crowd. I sat in the front row with nurse. I was very little and understood nothing. People walked and talked upon the stage; everybody laughed, even father himself. I laughed too, until nurse wanted to take me away and put me to bed. I saw my brothers' tutor run across the stage, and the glasses clinked on the tray he carried -- it looked as if he were going to drop them. It was rather dark on the stage, but in one corner, behind the sofa, I noticed my sister Tanya. I wanted to shout to her, but nurse told me that one was supposed to sit still here, and Tanya smiled at me cheerfully. At that moment I was taken away to bed.
All my brothers and sisters were gathered in the Yasnaya Polyana dining room. Something important and solemn was going on. All were excited, acted unnaturally and talked about dividing things. Father was discontented with something. Mother was angry because Masha refused to take her share of the property. Vanichka and I drew lots to settle what should go to each one. This was fun.
It was a bright, warm day. The air was clear and transparent. All sounds -- the chirping of birds, the strokes of the ax in the woods, voices, the noise and whistles of the railway engine -- were unusually clear and sharp as though made of glass. The forest was green; only maple leaves showed red here and there. Father and I walked along the gully in the Cherta forest, stepping upon short, fluffy, dark grass such as there is only in autumn. To the right and left were stretches of woodland with cut timber. We came out into the "Burned Clearing" with its centenarian oaks, and turned sharply to the left, to the Hvadiushkin knoll. Here, several years before, the timber had been cut, and a large tract was overgrown with hazelnut bushes. That summer the hazelnuts were "spilling," as people said in our locality -- I never saw so many in my life. I would bend down a twig, and find clusters of five or six, and sometimes more. Ripe and yellow, they fell to the ground at the slightest touch. Picking the nuts, I could not see father behind the bushes. I was frightened.
"Au-u, papa, where are you?"
"Hop, hop, hop," he replied, "I'm here; come, there are lots here!"
I was reluctant to leave that bush, there were so many on it; and such greed took possession of me that I wanted to take home all the nuts there were. I grabbed the biggest clusters and ran to him -- and there he was with just as many more.
Suddenly there was a shout, and an angry voice said, "What are you doing here, eh? Wait til I get you!" The branches were pushed apart and a guard emerged from the thicket. "Oh, it's you, Your Excellency!" He spoke in an entirely different tone. It came out that small lots of this land with the hazelnuts were leased by the government foresters to tradesmen, who hired guards. Naturally, in spite of that, village women and youngsters sneaked in and gathered nuts, although the guards chased them and took their booty away; sometimes the trespassers themselves abandoned it for fear of being caught red-handed.
Father talked with the guard, paid him for the nuts, and we continued to pick them. We gathered a whole sackful, stripped off the husks, and filled the sack again. Now there was no room to put in any more. The sack was tied, father loaded it on his back, and we started for home. We were just emerging from the woods when father stumbled against something. "Look," he said, "a whole sackful of nuts! Probably someone has dropped it for fear of being caught. The sack is dirty and moist; it must have been here several days." Father picked up the sack, which must have weighed some thirty pounds. He tied it to our own sack and loaded both on one shoulder. It was getting dark, and we were still about six versts [Footnote: Four miles; a verst is approximately two-thirds of a mile.] from the house. I saw father change his load from one shoulder to the other; he was tired. "Wait," he said to me, "take my cane, push the sack up from behind." The cane had a rubber tip; I pushed the sack up; the rubber slipped off. Father hurried; I barely managed to keep pace with him -- not walking but trotting at times. Sweat rolled from my face like rain, I was at the end of my strength. I don't know how we reached home. We were exhausted.
It was dark when we arrived -- probably about eight o'clock; dinner had long been over. We triumphantly unloaded the heap of nuts on the table. Everyone, I thought, was envying us; and mother scolded father for being so late and dragging such a little child with him. She had been on the point of sending men on horseback to search for us.
The summers at Yasnaya Polyana were gay. Horseback riding, swimming in the Voronka, going for mushrooms, long walks, tennis, croquet followed one after the other. The servants were kept running all day long carrying out our wishes and whims. My sister Masha alone took no part in the general pastimes. She hurried to the village to visit the sick, worked in the field, and, in her free time, did copying for father. Once in a while, I went to the field where Masha worked with a firm intention of helping her, but, of course, I only interfered -- came dangerously near being picked up on a pitchfork, climbed upon a hay wagon, and disturbed haystacks. But when I took Masha her dinner of two hard-boiled eggs, a bottle of kvas [Footnote: Russian drink made out of rye flour.], a fresh cucumber, a piece of black bread, and a small cup of raspberries or other berries I had picked myself, I felt that I, too, was doing something useful. She sat down with the women somewhere in the shade and ate. Her wavy blond hair stuck to her temples, the back of her percale dress was dark with sweat; she wiped her sunburned, freckled face with a handkerchief. "Tired? Why, Masha? Come on home!" But she smiled sadly, as if knowing something that I could not understand.
The thought of Masha in those years of my childhood and adolescence is a memory that makes my heart joyous and clear. Her whole appearance reminded one of father, although if her features were examined severally nothing but her gray eyes, attentive and deep, and her high forehead were father's. Slender and graceful, she had much dexterity: everything went the right way in her capable, slightly knotted hands. Masha's expression was earnest, concentrated, as if she were intent on what was going on inside her. No matter whom she met, she always found a kind and needed word, and it came out naturally -- as if she knew what chord should be played to find a response. Everybody called Masha homely: her mouth was large like mother's, her teeth defective, and her nose slightly too large; but her whole being was lovely and attractive.
I received much tenderness and kindness from sister Masha. For a time, I suffered cruelly from large dangerous abscesses in the ears. Masha took care of me -- no one could nurse a sick person as she did. The pain was terrible. Bandaged, poulticed, I would sit upon my pillow all night through, swaying back and forth and moaning. Masha sat with me, embracing me. I laid my head on her breast and felt better.
Masha seldom scolded me. One day was reading Mayne Reid's "Headless Horseman". It was bedtime, but the book was so fascinating that I continued to read in bed, thought it was strictly forbidden. Not until Masha was actually at my bedside did I realize that somebody had come in. Instinctively I blew out the candle. Masha became angry. "Aren't you ashamed? Not only do you do something forbidden but you want to hide it, you want to lie!" Masha's voice sounded unkind and harsh, and she almost slammed the door as she went out. "How wicked and unjust Masha is," I thought to myself, and I burst into tears. Finally, I stopped crying, and my thoughts went wandering off to the American prairies. I dozed. "Sasha -- are you asleep?" Masha was sitting on the edge of my bed. "Forgive me," she said. "You know, I thought that I must have been wrong. If you are afraid of me, it means I gave you a reason for it; perhaps I had not been kind to you." And all of a sudden my feelings of offense and irritation vanished and were replaced by contentment and repentance. I felt ashamed of having wished to deceive Masha and overjoyed because she was so good that she forgave me for it. "I won't, I won't do it again," I whispered through my tears. She stroked my head, and even though the room was dark, I knew that tears were in her eyes, too, and that her face shone with kindness.
There had been many depressing things in Masha's childhood, as there were in mine. She told me one how, when she and brother Lyova were growing up together -- there was only one year's difference between them -- mother gave all of her affection, care, and tenderness to him; while Masha, a skinny, homely girl, felt hurt and alone. I was deeply impressed by Masha's story of how mother had them sew little bags and promised to pay ten kopecks for each. They had no money, and ten kopecks seemed like great wealth. Masha tried very hard and sewed hers very neatly. Lyova did his in a hit-or-miss manner. And mother gave him his ten kopecks but entirely forgot about Masha. She cried, but never dared to remind mother of it.
When Masha grew up, it somehow happened that she became alienated from mother. Mother and daughter were entirely different persons. Mother was irritated by all of Masha's acts and feelings, and condemned her for everything: for her refusal to take part of the estate, for the simplicity of her life, for her medical work. But besides all this, she was jealous of father's affection for masha. Masha was closer to father than any of us, and he needed her in his work, in his dealings with people. She gave father a great deal of affection and needed no words to understand him. He would look at her and she would know, with her innate sensitiveness, what he wanted of her.
My eldest sister, Tanya, was the favorite of the whole family. Mother loved her infinitely more that she did Masha. Mother and Tanya went out together, and afterward they always exchanged lively reminiscences. But Tanya's affection for mother did not prevent her from being just as close to father and from sharing his views. She never took a sharp stand in anybody's favor and all her life tried to be a connecting link between the parents. Tanya was loved by the little ones because she often gave her time to them and by the older brothers because she was their friend. Merry, always lively, with wavy chestnut hair, vivid brown eyes, a short nose that seemed to be cut off at the end, she was very attractive. She knew foreign languages well and went to an art school. Repin and other painters spoke of her great ability. It was the general belief in the family that Tanya was the cleverest of all the children.
During my childhood, Tanya gave much attention to me. From my earlier years, when I sometimes called her "mama," I had an especial feeling for her. She knew how to approach me. I was not afraid of her, hardly ever told her a lie, and whenever she took me along with her, I felt that I was on a holiday.
Both my sisters apparently accepted father's ideas. But if anyone had asked which of them was more like the "dark" people, as we called father's followers, I would have replied without hesitating, "Masha, of course!" When Masha went to pitch hay with the peasants, in her plain cotton dress, her head bound with a kerchief, a rake across her shoulder, it seemed perfectly natural for her to do so. She talked with the village women as if she had lived her life with them; and they, too forgot that she was a young lady and a countess and shared with her their most guarded secrets: that this one's husband was untrue; that the baba (peasant woman) over there had had an unfortunate childbirth; that another's child was sick. They came to her for medical aid; she gave them medicine, advised them, cared for the sick, helped at childbirth. The women loved her.
Once, during a village fire, when, as usual, the whole village had gathered and the men peasants stood quietly smoking their makhorka [Footnote: Cheapest grade of tobacco.], Masha ran up and shamed them, making them carry water from the well while she herself dipped it, standing knee deep in water, regardless of the fact that she was not well. For this she paid a cruel price, suffering for the rest of her life from a feminine ailment which was perhaps the cause of her being unable, when she married, to bear anything but stillborn children.
To Tanya, "simplifying" came much harder. Merry, brilliant, coquettish, she dressed prettily, liked all beautiful things, and colors and palette suited her better than rake and pitchfork.
Once my two sisters arranged for themselves a laundry downstairs in a wing of the house, believing that it was a sin to make others wash our soiled clothes. There was much talk about the best method of wringing -- whether to do it toward yourself or away from yourself. And they dreamed of buying washing, wringing, and I-don't-know-what-other machines, while for the time being they did it all by hand, rubbing their skin raw. Both sisters were good at doing things with their hands; but it was obviously make-believe with Tanya, or, as our favorite childhood expressing ran, "not for truth," while with Masha it was "for truth". Masha was especially good at rinsing the wash, like a real village baba. Barefoot, with her sleeves turned up above her elbows, she bent down from the landing over our pond and rinsed the clothes with a broad, swinging motion, then heaped a piece, flattened it with one blow of the bat, and then, with another powerful blow, pressed out the water. These two blows, one muffled and the other sharp, sounded and re-echoed over the surface of the pond -- ta-tam! ta-tam!
My eldest brothers, sergey and Ilya, did not stay long with us. They soon married and had homes of their own. Lyova lived with the family more than the others. He was nervous and sickly, and mother was always anxious about him.
Andrey, Mikhail (Misha), and I - "the little ones" - grew up together. Misha was the most musical member of the family. any melody he heard, he could pick out instantly on the piano, the guitar, or the balalaika. I remember how Shaliapin sang for the first time at our house in Moscow. Father did not like his "Song of the Flea" and "The Two Grenadiers". Shaliapin offered to sing "Dear Night", but the young pianist Goldenweiser, who accompanied him, was unable to play it without notes. Misha shyly came up to the piano and picked out the melody, and in a few minutes Shaliapin was singing to his accompaniment, which was rather primitive but quite true.
As to studying, Misha did not want to do any, and the Lyceum went by the board. Things came to such a pass that he was threatened with expulsion if he was late once more. Mother was in despair, chided him, and threatened him, but nothing helped. And then one evening Misha again came home late and so did not want to get up the next morning, although the servant tried several times to rouse him. What was to be done? I took a pitcher full of ice- cold water, tiptoed up to Misha's bed and emptied the entire pitcher over him. In a moment a disheveled, wet head stuck out from under the covers and sleepy gray eyes looked out balefully. Misha jumped up and leaped after me. I fled along the corridor, he ran after. I ran out of the yard gate and into the street. Misha came to his senses, ran back home, dressed and went to the Lyceum. For a long time after that, I avoided meeting; Misha had hard fists and his to that it smarted.
Early in september, we usually moved to Moscow, where we three young ones had to study. My brothers attended the gymnasium; I had a governess and tutors and studied at home. Father and my sisters used to stay at Yasnaya Polyana late in the autumn, and some years they left Moscow for the country in the early spring, although mother disliked very much to part with them. She asserted that without her care, without the cook, and without good food, father was sure to get sick, that the sisters would never know how to take care of him as she would, that they lived in filth and without servants, and generally were apt to do a lot of foolish things.
As far back as I can remember, father suffered chronically from pains in his stomach. Sometimes he had constipation and sometimes diarrhea, and he was especially tormented by heartburn. There was nothing that the physicians did not try on him - soda, powdered charcoal, magnesia, various mineral waters - and nothing helped. Sometimes he suffered form pains in the liver, but I do not remember his having any acute attacks. Mother used to say that earlier he had suffered terribly. His cries of pain used to awaken her. Once she came running to the drawing room to find him rolling on the floor in torture. Consequently, she was always concerned about having light and nourishing food for him, and the question of food was very nearly made into a cult.
Every evening the cook, Semyon Nikolayevich, would report to her, and they would discuss the menu at length. If, for any reason, father felt weak, mother and Semyon Nikolayevich conspired to pour some meat broth clandestinely into his mushroom soup. When mother was busy, Semyon Nikolayevich put the tentative menu on her desk; it was written in a copy book which he had sewn together himself. Here, besides the daily menus of dinners and lunches, one could see instructions from her, such as "Vanichka has a stomach ache, make him some chicken cutlet and bouillon," or "Cook some thin Smolensk gruel in mushroom broth for Lev Nikolayevich's lunch, he has complained of pains in the stomach," and so on. Semyon Nikolayevich understood mother at half a word, and he carried his culinary art to perfection. And every evening, before retiring, mother thought over lovingly and attentively what each one should be given to eat. That was her greatest pride.
At the same time, father strove to reduce his wants to the minimum; he felt no need for cooks or waiters. Whenever he made his escape with my sisters to Yasnaya Polyana, he gloried in his freedom. They would employ some plain village woman who knew nothing of cooking, and who chopped off and threw away the asparagus heads; but, on the other hand, did not attempt to mix meat broth with father's mushroom soup. I was then too little to understand much, but it always seemed to me that my father and sisters, when they went alone to Yasnaya Polyana, had a jolly time of it, like school children left without supervision. They wrote us cheerful letters; and, when the family was reunited, we heard many stories about their life in the country. I remember one about a visit from Aunt Tatyana Andreyevna, my mother's sister. They treated her to vegetarian meals, which she detested. One day, before dinner, father and my sisters dragged a live hen into the dining room, tied her to the foot of auntie's chair and laid a big butcher's knife at her place. My aunt could not understand why they had done this. "Why, didn't you want chicken?" asked father. "All right. But we have no one here who could make up his mind to slaughter the hen, so we have prepared everything for you to do it." Auntie refused meat under such conditions.
It was mother's conviction that the children ought to be educated, and that we must therefore live in Moscow; while father believed that the children should not be forced to study but should be brought up in a simple manner, and if they themselves were desirous of knowledge, they could have it. as a result, large sums of money were spent on tutors and schools, but no one felt like studying. The younger children felt the discord between the parents and naturally took from each whatever was easier to grasp and appealed more to them. The fact that father believed education indispensable for each man and that he himself to his last days tried to replenish his stock of knowledge, we ignored, catching only what he said against schooling. Mother's words about the necessity of having plenty of money in order to be able to dress well, to keep horses, hold receptions and balls, and eat good food appealed to us. But as to her demand that we apply ourselves and graduate from our schools, that was unpleasant. We gave no thought to these things but lived as easily as possible.
I loved our old house on Khamovniki Street in Moscow [Note: The name of the street is currently Ulitsa Lva Tolstogo, Lev Tolstoy Street] - and especially the garden. How shady, how immense it seemed! Paths overgrown with shrubbery were like impenetrable thickets, a group of apple or pear trees like a whole orchard; the lanes seemed to have no end. The high and inaccessible mound and the little summer house overgrown with shrubs and lined inside with paper representing galloping horses were to me full of mystery and beauty.
Besides the garden, the Khamovniki house had a large courtyard surrounded by a high fence and outbuildings. We usually came to town with a complete household: a pair of carriage horses and the old coachman Emelyanych, a cow, a wagon of hay and oats, barrels of salt cucumbers and sauerkraut, great stores of preserves. Once we even brought father's saddle horse, Malchik (Boy). I remember Malchik grazing in the garden, and myself, instead of studying, watching him chase father's Eskimo dog, Belka. The cow was housed in the barn nearest the street; behind that were the stable and the carriage barn, and the last barn was filled with books. Here were stored, in great quantities, father's works which mother published and sold. This was the money on which the whole family lived, for the books brought in about 20,000 rubles a year. In an annex lived the old manager who did our bookkeeping, and in a small watchman's lodge outside the gate lived the yardman and the coachman. A board walk led to the kitchen, which was on the other side of the house, with the servants' dining room and the tiny room of Semyon Nikolayevich.
The house was an old one. Even at that time mother used to say that it was over a hundred years old. [Footnote: The great fire which swept over Moscow in 1812 during the first days of Napoleon's occupation of the city resulted in the destruction of, or serious damage to, most of the buildings.] She assured everybody that the place was uncomfortable, that it was not fit for receptions, that it never could have occurred to anyone by "Lyovochka" to buy a house in such an unaristocratic part of the town where there factories all around. To me, however - when I was a child - it seemed that no other house could be as beautiful and cozy as our Khamovniki house. Naturally, we children paid little attention to its exterior, and I remember very well that when mother suddenly decided to renovate it, and the old grown house, with its gloss long gone, suddenly became rose color with pistachio-green shutters, we all felt offended for its sake. It became repulsive, like an old woman trying to look young.
We lived downstairs. Here were the dining-room, our parents' bedroom, Tanya's room, that of the boys, the nursery, my room, and the governess'. Upstairs were the reception rooms: the small entrance hall which Tanya arranged as a reception room for herself and where young people usually gathered; then the ballroom, the big drawing room, and the small one. Those rooms did not seem cozy to me. Only the big takhta - the oriental couch - in the drawing room was nice; it was broad and low and very well fitted to turn somersaults upon. In the large ballroom the nicest place was the bearskin under the piano. I remember how I liked to lie on the bearskin, snuggle against the bear's head and listen when someone was playing.
Two short flights of steps led from the reception rooms to a corridor - one from the ballroom and the other from the little drawing room. The first room that opened into the corridor was sister Masha's; it was low, with small windows. Then followed the rooms of the housekeeper, the seamstress, the waiter; and at the very end, in the corner of the house, separated from all the rest, were two small rooms with low ceilings -- father's rooms; one with a washstand behind a walnut wardrobe; and one, to the right, his study, the "holy of holies" to our childish imaginations.
The rooms of my two sisters were quite different. Tanya's bedroom downstairs and her little reception hall upstairs were arranged very tastefully. Comfortable furniture, small divans, unusual homecraft table covers, pictures, albums, no end of photographs of relatives and friends - all were somehow scattered without system but with much taste. In Masha's room there was nothing superfluous. Simple, hard chairs and table, a hard bed without a mattress - everything gave the impression of severity and cleanness. I liked to go to Tanya's room; there were many interesting pictures in it, and besides, in the big wooden homecraft bowl, there were often mixed nuts. But in Masha's room I felt almost as shy as in father's. Everything there was stern and severe; sometimes there was the smell of medicine.
In the winter of 1891, father, Tanya, and Masha did not go to Yasnaya, but to Ryassan province to help the suffers from the great famine of that year. At the same time, brother Lyova went to Samara province. Mother had to stay behind in Moscow with us little ones. Letters came, of which scattered echoes reached our nursery. They told of many horrors; people were swelling from hunger and dying. They had no firewood and were burning straw from their roofs to keep warm. We received samples of bread, black as coal, made from goosefoot. We looked at the bread, felt of it, and found it impossible to believe that people could eat it. I fearfully imagined my father and sisters living in appalling conditions, eating badly, wandering about in blizzards. Mother constantly worried about all of them. Bending over her writing desk, she sorted letters and wrote something with an earnest face while I, a small child, sat on the floor and examined the envelopes she threw into the waste basket. They were often sealed with five wax seals. I played with the envelopes and spelt out the words with difficulty: "Enclosed three rubles!" "Enclosed one hundred rubles!" For the first time in my life, I felt the importance of money and the desire that more and more such envelopes should come to us.
Provisions came, too, and mother sent everything away "over there," where, as I knew, my father and sisters were doing great deeds.
When I grew a little older, my favorite spot in the winter was the skating yard. Father used to take part in the activities there. A small space in the courtyard and a wooden mound had to be cleared of snot. Then hundreds of barrels of water were poured on to obtain a smooth, icy surface. It was seldom that anybody was hired for this work. We all helped in it. Some mornings, as the yardman opened the outside shutters and I looked out of the window, I saw father pulling a little sled with a barrel full of water to the skating yard. His beard was covered with solid frost, his fact was red, thick steam was rising from his mouth. Quietly, without haste, he pulled the sled to the proper place, lifted and overturned the barrel. The water quickly spread over the surface, father adroitly sprang aside, replaced the barrel on the sled and pulled it back again.
The well was in the interior of the garden. A small shelter was built over the primitive hand pump. When water was pumped, the whole little structure creaked and swayed. Father carried water for the kitchen every day. He harnessed himself to the sled, brought the barrel to the well, turned about, and pumped. The barrel was heavy, and he pulled it with difficulty on the narrow winding path. The sled often slipped sideways on the turns, father pressed hard on the frozen rope across his chest, the sled righted again, and some of the transparent, bluish water leaped out of the barrel upon the snow.
Father yearned for motion - for the physical work to which he became so accustomed while in the country. There he always managed to have enough of it - sawing wood, working in the fields, walking a great deal. He disliked city life. Longing for exercise, he even began learning to ride a bicycle. At that time bicycles had solid tires and no coaster brakes. Father amused us once by a story of his early apprenticeship on that vehicle. As he was wobbling once from side to side in the training field, he saw a lady going in the opposite direction. She also was none too sure of herself. "As all my thoughts were centered on the lady, I felt drawn precisely in her direction," father said. "Of course we collided and both fell!"
Mother used to say: "One never knows what fancies will come into Lyovochka's head!"
Once, when a big sale was going on, father announced to our great surprise, for he never went to big stores - "I was at Muir and Merilees' today. I spent over two hours there."
"What were you doing?" mother asked.
"Observing. It was very interesting. If a lady comes in a two-horse carriage, the doorman springs forward, unhooks the robe, and helps the lady out. If a lady comes in a one-horse carriage, he only opens the door respectfully to her. If the lady comes by hackney coach, he pays no attention."
Saturday was our jour fixe. Between lunch and dinner, ladies called in their carriages. A lackey in dress coat led them upstairs to the drawing room, where mother received them. In the evening many guests came, chiefly young people - friends and acquaintances of Tanya and my brothers. Often mother made me take the seat behind the samovar and pour tea. I was ill at ease at these ceremonies.
It happened sometimes that during such a soiree the lackey took one of father's "dark" visitors to him, trying to walk with him through the rooms as inconspicuously as possible. There was amazement in the guest's timidly bent figure, in the furtive, embarrassed look that he gave the assembly. "This way, please," the lackey would say as if unaware of the visitor's distracted haste and confusion. He opened a small door, pasted over with wall paper, leading from the ballroom, pointed to the steps that led to the dark corridor and let the visitor go ahead of him.
We children were often taken to balls. At one of the children's costume parties the cream of Moscow aristocracy was expected to gather, and it was hoped that Grand Duke Sergey Aleksandrovich would come. On that day, a coiffeur from "Theodore" came and made me a huge coiffure - from my own hair, it is true, but in gray. To produce it he used a staggering amount of pomade and powder and no end of hairpins, all of which made my head ache. I carefully avoided meeting father when the costume was put on me, and tried to run straight out of my room through the dark corridor to the anteroom and slip into the closed coach, although mother insisted that I should show my costume to father.
When the ball was in full swing the Grand Duke came. Presently, as I was dancing the quadrille with my partner, a secondary school pupil, Count K---, I heard a tap on the window; there stood father in his short winter coat and round cap, and with him sister Masha. I was terribly glad to see them - they looked so kind and smiling. I wanted very much to run out into the yard; but my partner remained entirely indifferent and said that it would be awkward to go out just then.
Once there was a dancing soiree at the house of my friend, Nadya Martynova. I was brought and left there. During supper Nadya's brothers sat next to me and kept refilling my glass with champagne. It was hot in the rooms, I was thirsty, and the ice- cold champagne quenched my thirst very nicely. When we left the table, I felt that people, walls, and everything else were swimming away from me. With great difficulty, I walked to the ballroom and sat down, waiting for the mazurka to begin. Suddenly, as if through a haze, I saw father's dog Belka. "It only seems so to me!" I thought. But Belka, her collar tinkling, made the round of all the guests with an embarrassed look, smelled them, and finding me at last, joyously waved her bushy tail and lay down at my feet. Then father entered the room. I shall never forget the feeling of shame and terror which overcame me. "What if he notices me?" The intoxication left me in a moment, the haze dropped from my sight. Dancing, meanwhile, had stopped. The appearance of father, in his peasant half-length coat and with his dog, in the midst of the ball, had made a great impression. The hostess and the guests surrounded him. But father, as if feeling very uncomfortable, hastily left the room.
My little brother Vanichka occupies one of the largest places in my early memories. He was born a tine and weak baby; everyone was worried over his health, and somehow it so happened that mother's life became centered on him, and I was left in the background. Nurse's tenderness for me also cooled. "Go on, don't bother," she would say. "Don't you see that Vanichka is crying?" And she would angrily shove me aside. "Be still - keep still, Vanichka is asleep - I must have some gruel made for Vanichka - Vanichka is not well," was often heard around the house. Soon I became used to the idea that the center of my life, too, was Vanichka, that we must all take care of him; and I ceased to covet the privileges that were reserved for him.
When Vanichka passed infancy, we saw plainly that he was much like father - though it was not a resemblance in features, but rather some inner likeness, as with sister Masha. He was thin, with a transparent skin and attentive gray-blue eyes; and on his high forehead was a blue vein which made him look like a grown man. In winter he did not have his hair cut and it curled, flaxen and silky, down over his shoulders.
Vanichka was an unusual child - it is said of such children that they do not live. His outstanding trait was kindness. It was amazing to see how this small being, as soon as his intellect awoke within him, always thought of old nurse - who was tired and sleepy - and of mother - who sat at his bedside when he was sick. "Go to bed, mama dear; I want nothing - nothing at all." He did not like people to say to him, "this is yours, Vanichka; this is for you." "No, no, I don't want it to be mine. Everything is everybody's."
Everyone in the house not only loved Vanichka but always feared for him. He was nervous and abnormally sensitive. Things which glanced off my mind without leaving a trace would cut deeply into his consciousness. He could not bear to have people or animals suffer. He wanted to help all of them. Quarrels and bad feeling between people hurt him deeply. We felt that in this frail, little body a signal spirit dwelled - some unchildlike, wise understanding of life. It seems to me that father was keenly aware of it. It may be that he thought, like many others, that Vanichka would continue his life's task. When Vanichka approached father, and, raising his little face without a trace of embarrassment, talked to him like a grown person, I saw what great tenderness passed through father's glance. He smiled, but there was suffering in the smile.
Dear little Vanichka! He was more just and wise than the grown people. With some deep intuition he sensed the truth and reached out for it as a plant reaches toward the sun. How many times, not knowing that he did it, he taught older ones around him! When someone acted meanly, Vanichka suffered so intensely that, out of love for him, one hastened to correct the mistake. He felt that he was better loved by the family than I was, and that hurt him also. Every small injustice to me upset him. Someone would give him candy and forget about me, but he instantly remembered, "And Sasha?" Yet, despite this sensitivity for others and unusual feeling for justice, Vanichka was a true child in everything else. He loved to run, play pranks, and romp.
At Yasnaya Polyana, our life was more or less normal; but at Moscow, it was altogether unsuited for such a nervous and fragile child as Vanichka. Mother could not keep from constantly going into raptures over him, showing him off to everybody and boasting about him. She loved Vanichka more than anything else in the world, and she could never feast her eyes on him enough.
One incident stands out in my memory. Upstairs, in the big drawing room, mother and Vanichka were sitting at a desk. Mother was talking to him and then writing something down. I wanted to know what they were doing. I approached them from the left and from the right, trying in vain to attract mother's attention. Finally, I felt myself superfluous and went away. Soon vanichka joined me. He was tired of sitting still, and we went back to the childish affairs that were of interest to us. Mother continued to write at the desk. A few days later, with wonder, I heard mother telling some guests that Vanichka was surely going to be a writer because he had written a remarkable story about a little dachshund. How well I remember father's face when he heard about Vanichka's talent and the story he wrote. He knitted his eyebrows and bent his head, but did not say a word.
On February 26, 1894, father wrote the following postscript in a letter to sister Tanya:
[Tolstoy writes] Just now all are going somewhere to
a party. All are dressing and Theodore is curling
Sasha's and Vanichka's hair. It's all very merry, but it
pained me much to see Vanichka curled and Sasha dressed
up. The only salvation is in the human soul being
hermetically sealed and protected from harm. They are
now all there at the party, and Masha and I are alone at
home. She is working industriously... ["Sovremenniye
Zapiski", Paris]
The family did not like the way mother was bringing up Vanichka, but it was impossible to go against her wishes. Everyone felt that another child in his place would inevitably be spoiled. But it was difficult to spoil Vanichka. We were often taken to children's evening parties, dressed in our best, Vanichka wearing a little white flannel suit with blue anchors, short trousers, open slippers, and black stockings that look very smart on his thin, shapely legs. Little girls who used to dislike dancing with small boys danced gladly with him. For the mazurka, Vanichka always invited my friend Nadya - a thin, blond girl, who was as graceful as he but much older. He liked Nadya, and she treated him lovingly and considerately. Sometimes they were chosen to dance the mazurka at the head of the column. In sight of everybody, the tiny boy led his graceful lady. Vanichka danced like a grown man. He stamped his little foot, went down on one knee and again flew ahead over the smooth floor.
About midnight - and sometimes later - we went home. It was dark in the closed carriage; the pair of black horses beat the pavement rhythmically with their hoofs, and the carriage swung softly on its springs. Vanichka sat there, pale, his little face drawn, but his excitement far from gone. He and mother exchanged impressions. Sometimes I gook part in the conversation, but more often I went to sleep there in the carriage. I remember the tired feeling we had when walking along the corridor to our nursery. Nurse or the maid pulled our clothes off over our heads, we fell into our beds and were instantly sleep. Sometimes, however, we were to excited to sleep and talked for a long time.
Vanichka was nervous and sickly. One winter, he was ill particularly often. He had fever all the time. First it was high, then it went down to 100.4 degrees and stayed there for a long time. The doctor called regularly; Vanichka was stuffed with quinine but failed to improve. He became thinner and paler. Dark circles appeared under his eyes, the skin was more transparent and the blue vein on his forehead more prominent. Then, no one knew why, the fever left him suddenly. Vanichka went out walking with me; dancing lessons were resumed. Mother regained her spirits, we all became cheerful again.
I had a dream. We are at Yasnaya. Vanichka and I are climbing up a winding staircase to the second story where our room is. The staircase is steep, dark. We climb on and on. Vanichka is ahead of me. I follow closely after. "Slowly, Vanichka, slowly!" I cry to him. "I cannot keep up with you. Wait for me!" But he climbs higher and higher. I strain to keep pace with him but cannot. It grows light over my head, and I see - the sky! Vanichka leaves the stairs and rises into the air. I reach out after him, I call him, but he rises higher and higher into the sky. Another moment - Vanichka is no longer seen. I cry - and wake up in tears. Thank God, it's only a dream!
Misfortune came suddenly. In the morning, Vanichka was merry and mischievous, and, toward evening, he burned as if on fire. Mother sat by him, and he comforted her. "It's nothing, mama dear, nothing." The thermometer registered over 104 degrees. The doctor diagnosed a galloping form of scarlet fever. Toward evening of the next day, Vanichka died.
I do not remember how I learned about it. They had separated us - put me in another room across the corridor. I was sick - perhaps also with scarlet fever in a light form. Dead stillness reigned in the house. Everyone spoke in whispers and walked on tiptoe. From time to time, wild, insane cries pierced the silence. Mother, out of her mind with despair, was convulsed with hysterics.
They did not allow me to go into the nursery, but in the night when the house was quiet I crept in, shivering in my nightgown. The powerful, sweetish fragrance of flowers mixed with that of wax and incense struck me. Upon a table in the middle of the room stood a small coffin. Candles were burning. I stood up on my toes and looked in. It was Vanichka; but the expression was not his. It was important and alien. I reached over and kissed his forehead. An icy cold pierced me. I shrieked and ran headlong from the room. Tedious, anguish-filled days dragged on. Everyone feared for mother. Sometimes she became a little quieter, gathered Vanichka's playthings, handled them over and over again, had his pictures rephotographed; then again she sobbed and cried out that she was going to kill herself. "Why, why is God so unjust to me? Why? Why did he take Vanichka from me?" she cried. And once she sobbed out, beside herself, "Why - why Vanichka? Why not Sasha?"
"Enough countess, that is a sin - enough!" nyanya said to her. "How can you let yourself be so upset?" But nurse herself grieved no less than mother. Her eyes were never dry.
And father? I heard him go into mother's room and soothe her, but from my sisters I knew that he suffered intensely.
As for myself, I not only yearned for vanichka, but I felt deeply unfortunate and guilty because I, vigorous, healthy, not needed by anyone, was left to live; while he, beloved by everyone, had died. I wept and asked, "Lord, O Lord, why did Vanichka die? Why not I?"
I thought of Vanichka often but for a long time was unable to picture him alive. I saw him as he lay in his coffin, and the fragrance of hyacinths and incense pursued me relentlessly.
Melancholy hung over the whole household, and mother grieved more than any of us and could find comfort in nothing. Now she went from one church to another, praying, going to confession and communion; now she went to the grave of Vanichka in a quiet cemetery out in the fields. There also was the grave of Alyosha, a brother whom I do not remember. Mother's stately figure in mourning is still before my eyes, bending over a small fresh mound. Her trembling lips whispered something, and tears flowed uninterruptedly from her reddened eyes. She intrusted the care of the two little graves to a peasant family from the village of Nikolskoye, and she liked to talk with them - probably their simple words calmed her.
We were amazed at mother's meekness. She seemed born anew - she was kind, never angry, and she wept unceasingly. Father was comforted in his grief by the thought that misfortune seemed to draw her away from worldly things and vanity, and to awaken in her spiritual, deeper interests which would not only lighten her own life but would make her nearer to him. [Footnote: Father wrote in a letter to his friend and my godmother, A. A. Tolstaya: "Yesterday she went to confession to a very intelligent priest, Valentine (friend and spiritual teacher of my sister Mashenka), who told Sonya some very good words; that mothers who lose children always turn to God first, but afterwards usually go back to worldly cares and again draw away from God, and he warned her against this. And it does seem to me that this will not happen to her."]
Mother gave me much of her time: took care of finding good tutors and governesses for me, called doctors if I was not well, tried to develop my musical gifts by taking me to concerts, made me read aloud. But I could not take Vanichka's place; and she could not give me the tenderness and motherly caresses for which I yearned so much. Sometimes I timidly tried to approach her with that feeling, but she did not understand. "What is it you want, Sasha?" she would ask with such genuine surprise that I instantly recoiled. Little by little, a feeling of fear arose in me. I did not understand what she wanted of me and could not tell for what I was to expect greater punishment - a broken teacup, a badly learned lesson, or telling a lie - I knew from experience that I might get equally severe treatment for all three and tried to hid my acts from her.
There are some memories, which are sad to recall, yet they come back.
How well I remember a conversation with my nurse when I was about fourteen!
It is Sunday. No lessons today. I throw a warm dressing gown over my shoulders, stick my feet into felt slippers, and run into the "maids' quarters" to see nurse. There is always a brass samovar boiling upon the table at this hour of the morning; an oil wick burns before the sacred images in the corner. The room is very hot, but I shiver after leaving bed, and gulp the hot tea. "Don't you want any jam?" says nurse. "No, I don't. Tell me a story." "Oh, what is there to tell?" Nurse has a coarse, rasping voice, but just now I am her guest - she is glad to have me - and tries to speak softly. "There's nothing to tell."
"Nyanya, dear, please - tell me about Alyosha."
Nyanya sighs deeply. "Alyosha was an angel, God take him to his kingdom!" she says, and crosses herself. "Such a child, such a child! His eyes so wise, so clear - oh, I'd rather not remember. And it all came from those Englishwomen." Nyanya detested foreign nurses and governesses and was always jealous of them. "The air, the air!" Nyanya clutches at her breast, thus picturing a governess who suffocated in stale air. "It's them that got the countess all confused. To have cold wind blowing right in your face - is that sensible? Sure enough, they let the child catch cold. People have lived and lived without fresh air, and lived to be a hundred! When Alyosha die you were quite little; you were silly. You were laughing and happy and thought he was a doll. And there he lay in his little coffin just as if he were alive."
Nyanya pulls a handkerchief from the pocket of her many gored cotton skirt and wipes her reddened eyes. "Go away, you've only upset me." She rises halfway from her seat and pours herself a cup of tea. Nyanya's cup is large, sky blue, and has an inscription on it: "Congratulations on your saint's day."
"You'd better drink your tea," she says, and takes up the steaming saucer of tea, blows on it, and swallows it audibly. I don't like her story about Alyosha. Somehow I feel sad and ashamed that I could laugh when Alyosha died. "It's God's will in everything. The Lord did not let alyosha and Vanichka live - and to think how your mother did not want to bring you into the world, and yet look at the size you've grown to be."
"How is that, she didn't want --? Tell me, nyanya!"
"What a bore! She has to know everything!"
"Please, nyanya, please!"
She finishes her cup of tea, turns the cup upside down on the saucer, and wipes her mouth with her apron. "Well, the countess didn't want to bear you, and that's all. I remember there was trouble then between the count and the countess. The countess used to weep, and the count kept being so very serious and frowning that a person would be frightened just to see him go by. The count would sit alone in his study, or else he'd go somewhere and stay away a long, long time. And the countess wept all the time. Then the countess learned that she was pregnant. `Lyovochka,' she cried, `I don't want to bear a child, I don't want to! You want to leave us, to go away!' and all the time the count kept persuading her about something. Of course, being right there with the little ones, I heard it all. It's just the masters that always think we don't understand anything, but we get it all straight, every single thing - who's quarreled, and who's fallen in love, and with whom. So then sofya andreyevna went to tula, to see the midwife and to have a miscarriage. And the midwife says, `No, Countess, f it had been for someone else, I would do it with pleasure, but as for doing it for you - if you plaster me with gold, I'm not going to do it. Something might happen - and then it'd be all up with me!' And so the countess kept going to Tula for awhile, but nothing came of that. And there was nothing she didn't do to herself; she kept her feet in hot water, and took such hot baths that she couldn't stand them. Or else she would climb upon a chest of drawers and jump down from it, so that it was frightful to watch. `What are you doing, Sofya Andreyevna,' I would say to her. `How can you? You know you may lose your life that way!' `I don't want to bear the child, nurse,' she would say. `The count doesn't love me any more, he wants to leave us, to go away!' And again she would jump down. Well, nothing helped, she bore the child."
Her words strike deep, but nurse does not notice it and continues her tale.
"So just when the time came for you to be born, the count went off somewhere. He wasn't there, and he wasn't there, and that's all! The Countess cried. Toward night he came home, and then you were born. They made peace. You were born healthy; big, with black hair. One couldn't tell what kind of eyes you had, but they were big. Everybody in the house was glad that it was a girl - there hadn't been a girl for a long time, all the last ones were boys."
Nurse's samovar dies down, then begins to purr again. She rises and closes it tight with the lid. I cheer up a little. I feel satisfied that everybody rejoiced over my coming into the world, and wait impatiently for the end of the story.
"Well, nyanya, and what happened next?"
"Well - nothing."
"How nothing? Tell me, what was next."
Nyanya sits down again and begins to wipe the cups. "Next, the countess didn't want to nurse you, that's what was next. She felt too sick of everything. Things just wouldn't get right with the count. He acted queer those days. He would go off to the fields to work with the peasants, or he would be making boots, or else he would be wanting to give everything away altogether. Of course, the countess did not like that. Here they had lived and lived and got things into nice shape - and then again there were the little children. So the countess took a wet nurse for you, just to spite the count, because she knew he didn't like it. It was a healthy baba, a fat one."
Undisguised hostility sounds in nurse's voice. A boundless sadness invades my soul. I try to whisk my tears away without her noticing.
"There you are!" nyanya exclaims angrily. "What is this? If I had known you were such a cry baby, I wouldn't have told you, not for anything."
Old nyanya had been in the house longer than any of the other servants. She lost all attachment to her village, forgot it, and visited there but seldom. Her whole life became concentrated in our family. She brought up all of us, beginning with brother Andrey, and saw the funerals of Alyosha and Vanichka. Short, thick-set, and broad-shouldered, nurse was of a resolute and bold temper, did not search her pockets for a retort, as the Russian saying goes, and was afraid of no one, not even of mother before whom all the other servants trembled. Her attitude toward my father, who was her equal in years, was one of indulgent respect, but she did not approve of him.
"Well, nyanya, what do you think about death?" father asked her once.
"And why should I think about it, Your Excellency? It'll come anyway, it won't ask us."
On Thursday evenings, mother and I used to go to ensemble concerts. The music was complicated and difficult; I could not understand it and only wished it would end. The next morning at nine the tutor was coming; I had not yet learned my lessons and that meant getting up early. But mother, elegantly dressed and lively, did not notice that I was bored, and I never dared tell her that I did not want to go to the concert. She would surely be angry with me for such a refusal and would say, as she sometimes did: "Yes, an instructive, noble amusement does not interest you; all you want is to climb fences with boys and play street games."
As was not infrequent, I fell asleep during the program. Somewhere far, far off the violin sang with its thin voice and the bass notes of the 'cello droned. When I awoke it seemed as though a long time has passed, and I found it strange that nothing had changed, that the musicians were still intent on their playing, the candelabrums still shining, and the public still listening attentively. "This concert will never end," I thought. Not far from us sat Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev, an outstanding composer and musician. Mother chatted with him and after the concert suggested walking home. From the Hall of Nobility to our house was a walk of about fifty minutes. It was after eleven. I was terribly sleepy, my eyelids stuck together. I silently dragged myself after them.
Taneyev often came to see us at that time. He had small eyes and a kind, red face that was always glistening as if oiled, framed in a small beard; his fat body seemed packed into his clothes, and his thin, choking laughter reminded me of the gurgling of a setting hen. He lived in Mertvy lane, in a small rear cottage, with his old nurse, Pelageya Vasilyevna, who had the swaying gait of a duck and legs bend with rheumatism. She adored her fosterling, took great care of him, and when she thought that somebody was bothering him, sighed deeply and said: "Ah, you know Sergey Ivanovich is so tired, he played Beethoven's Sonata Passonata all morning!"
Taneyev was very friendly with father and with our whole family; he was a pleasant talker, and his music was a source of great delight to us. When he sat down at the piano he was entirely transfigured: his face became solemn and serious. His playing was excellent. In the beginning of our acquaintance, I liked Sergey Ivanovich, and I liked his cheerful old nurse. But little by little this feeling changed. The more I noticed mother's cordial manner with Taneyev, the less good feeling I had toward him. When Sergey Ivanovich came, I demonstratively went to my room. His heavy figure, his old-womanish laughter, the reddened tip of his small, neatly cut nose, everything about him irritated me now. Sometimes coachman Emelyanych, huge in his padded coat, the taught reins vibrating slightly in his hands, would bring up the sleigh with its fur=trimmed robe and the dark gray beauty, Lira, in the harness. Mother, in a velvet-covered fur coat and a little seal hat, was going marketing. "Is anybody coming today?" I would ask, although I knew perfectly well that Taneyev was coming. "I really don't know," mother would say, "Sergey Ivanovich, perhaps." About eight o'clock, smiling and rubbing his hands, Sergey Ivanovich appeared. He stayed all evening, played the piano sometimes and consumed the caviar and the bonbons from Albert with great delight.
Sometimes, when mother and I were on our way home from the Passage stores or Muir and Merilees', Mother would give a light knock on the broad padded pack of Emelyanych with her tortoise shell lorgnette: "You will turn in at Mertvy Lane." "Yes, madam." And, turning to me, she would add: "We must see how Sergey Ivanovich's old nurse is getting along." I would keep silent, setting my teeth. Nurse Pelageya Vasilyevna, with her good-natured freckled face and swaying gait, now seemed hateful to me. Sometimes, during such a visit, Sergey Ivanovich was unexpectedly at home. We would find him playing something or drinking tea in his tiny dining-room. He would jump up hastily and clumsily and become frantically busy -- he did not know how to be hospitable. Nyanya usually came to his rescue, asked us to sit down, and served us tea.
I always tried to find a pretext now for not attending the Thursday evening concerts - I had too many home lessons, or a headache. Mother, too, saw my feelings and took me there much less often.
In the spring, we went on out-of-town rides with Taneyev. Mother was kind, cheerful, dressed up. But the more lively she was, the gloomier I became. I pouted and said nothing all the way. Nothing could cheer me. Mother recited her favorite poem [by Tyutchev]:
Oh, how in our declining days
We love more tenderly and sadly --
This verse somehow became associated in my mind with Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev. I began to hate it and was immensely glad when I found out that father did not like it either. "A repulsive poem," he used to say, "praises driveling old-age love!" In this tormenting period of my life, I learned what sleeplessness was.
One day, I told Masha how I hated Taneyev. I was afraid to speak of it at first, but suddenly, glancing up at her, I understood that Masha knew it all and that it tormented her as much as it did me. Then my words flowed on in a torrent. I could not stop. I had to lay before her everything that had pained me so long. Masha was frightened. She tried to calm me, saying that there was nothing bad in mother's liking for Taneyev. "Look at father, how meek and patient he is, although he suffers." I knew that there was nothing "bad" in mother's feeling for Taneyev, but what was I to do so that the whole thing would become less galling to me? On this Masha could give no advice.
Ah, Masha! It was not long before she herself acted so that it was impossible to understand her. A cousin of ours, Nikolay Obolenskiy, or Kolasha, as we called him -- a grandson of my aunt Maria Nikolayevna -- was living with us. He was going to graduate from the university, and mother invited him to stay at our house. Kolasha was with us uneventfully day in and day out, and nobody paid much attention to him. He got up late, seldom went to the university, read novels, and smoked cigarettes. And all of a sudden, I learned that Masha was going to marry him! At first I would not believe it. What could there be in common between Masha and this handsome young man with the innate laziness of a lord, with a slow elastic gait and flowing speech, who rolled his r's elegantly in the French manner? Kolasha was far removed from the nimbus that surrounded sister Masha in my imagination. I could not bear the thought of her leaving father for his sake. But she loved Kolasha and decided to marry him. I remember that she found the church formalities very difficult. The priest objected to marrying relatives; then again, he demanded a certificate that Masha had been to confession and communion, which she had not. The wedding ritual itself was objectionable to her, who, following father, had left the organized church. She tried to do it all as simply as possible. Bride and groom, in everyday clothes, went to the church, where only a few relatives were present. But this was nothing compared with the compromise on which she had to decide as a result of her marriage. Her health was poor, there was no money, Kolasha did not care to take a position; and Masha had to ask that part of the property, which she had previously renounced, be given to her. I do not know which was harder for her to bear -- father's indulgent and loving silence or mother's reproaches.
Father lived in the midst of his family, but he was alone. Some oppressed him with their devotion, others demanded a high price for their sacrifices; some burdened him with their admiration, others chagrined him with their complete indifference to his ideas. Masha lone loved him without ever a backward glance, demanding nothing, and giving him all that he needed most: care, tenderness, sensitive understanding. Masha went away, but father always thought about her and wrote to her.
In 1898, father suddenly resumed artistic work -- he began "Resurrection." Contrary to his rule he was interested this time in the material returns from the work. He needed the money to send the Dukhobors to Canada. The Russian Government continued to persecute them for their refusal to bear arms, and they had decided to emigrate. The serial rights were sold to Marx, publisher of the weekly "Niva" (The Field), for 1,000 rubles per printed sheet (sixteen pages).
The dining-room table on the lower floor of our Moscow house was heaped with manuscripts and proofs. Everybody was busy copying -- tanya, mother, guests. Father came down from his study once in a while and gave instructions. I envied them all; I too wished to take part in the common work. Tanya must have understood and pitied me; she allowed me to copy father's letters under the press. [Footnote: A transfer process. A page of manuscript, written with special ink, is put into a book containing sheets of fine transparent paper. The paper is moistened and the book placed in a screw press. Many of Tolstoy's letters were duplicated in this way.] I worked for all I was worth. Straining my muscles, I screwed the press so hard that the table groaned.
The novel was finished in 1899 and the last proofs came from Marx. Father took them upstairs to look at them -- and again changed everything! But it proved impossible to make all of these new corrections in the foreign edition; and the russian edition was considerably mutilated by the censors. Thus it happened that, for a long time, there was no fully authorized text of "Resurrection" in print.
Tanya's marriage took place the same year. She was already thirty-five years old, and Mikhail Sergeyevich Sukhotin, her chosen husband, was considerably her senior. His first wife left him six children, of whom two were older than I. Tanya hesitated a long time. "Well, Sasha, what do you think about it. Shall I marry or not?" she asked me. I did not answer. I buried my face in a sofa cushion and cried bitterly. Sister laughed, then cried, also. Not a single person in the household was in sympathy with Tanya's marriage project; in fact, everyone was against it. Mother had always dreamed of a brilliant match for Tanya, her favorite daughter. She wished her to marry Mikhail Aleksandrovich Stakhovich or Count O----; Tanya had never been short of suitors. And here she was about to marry a widower with six children! Even the old servants grumbled: "What is the matter with Tatyana Lvovna? Marrying into all that brood of children!"
In the church, I could not keep from crying, although I feared that Tanya would notice it and be offended. Tears ran from father's eyes, also. After the wedding Mikhail Sergeyevich embarrassed me by asking me to address him with the familiar "thou." "You can say `thou' and yet call me `Mikhail Sergeyevich.' It will be both respectful and sister-like," he urged me. But I looked at the gray-headed, resectable, middle-aged man with a round stomach and could not make up my mind. It was not until much later that I got used to him and began calling him "Uncle Misha."
As time went on, everybody became attached to Mikhail Sergeyevich. Cheerful, witty, with an excellent disposition, he always brought animation into our midst. Father liked to talk and play chess with him. We also came to like his family. I became most friendly with Natasha and my equal in years, Misha.
Both Tanya and Masha were destined to suffer much grief in connection with their marriages. They were very happy with their husbands but suffered from the same inexplicable, dreadful deficiency -- they carried their children for seven, sometimes eight months, and then gave birth to stillborn babies. Not only my sisters themselves and their husbands but all of us waited every time in torment for the end of their pregnancies. We feared to talk of it or ask questions. But from the despair, the hopeless anguish in the faces of my sisters, we could guess that the movements of the child were weakening, and finally that they had ceased. Fear for the child turned into worry for the mother and terror before the impending fruitless suffering and deathly peril. I experienced a feeling of physical pain when thinking of this childbirth. "To marry, ever in my life?" I thought with a shudder. "Never, not for anything in the world."
After Tanya's marriage, the family became still lonelier. There were now left only father, mother, brother Misha, and I. then Misha finished his term as volunteer in the Sumskoy regiment -- he never graduated from any higher educational institution -- and married Miss Glebova, a fine girl whom he had loved, I believe, since he was eleven years old.
But in spite of this, our house was never deserted. There was the same commotion, and we had as many servants as before.
As a rule, people select their friends and acquaintances according to their own tastes. In our family, we were unable to do this. Father's name attracted many vain people, often shallow persons who tried to win a place in our household. We were unusually tolerant. A person would appear once, then come again; perhaps nobody liked him much, but he was not much noticed in the crowd. He would come back persistently and try to render petty services to members of the family. Little by little, we would get used to him, cease to mind him, and sometimes, forgetting ourselves, speak in his presence of our personal and family matters. He, in turn, presently considered himself as "one of the crowd." A few years later, it would come out that he "had been an intimate friend of the family" or perhaps "of Tolstoy himself" and had published memoirs.
I know for a fact that many others had serious questions to discuss with father, questions which would have interested him also, but delicacy of feeling prevented them from imposing their presence on him. Many years after father's death, i worked over his archives in the Rumyantsev Museum at Moscow. A writer of repute worked with me. With deep interest and love, he asked me many questions about Lev Nikolayevich and grieved that he had never had a chance to come to see him and speak with him on the many questions that occupied his mind.
"But why did you never come to Yasnaya Polyana?" I asked.
"I did come once," he replied. "I walked into the park through the front gates, turned off the drive, sat down on a bench, remained there several hours in impossible hesitation, and went back. I couldn't make up my mind. As the train carried me away from Yasnaya Polyana, I wept."
Tanya's friend, Yulia Ivanovna Igumnova, who lived with us for many years, became extremely useful in the house after my sisters had married and when I was not yet old enough to help father. She had been a classmate of Tanya's at art school and had come to Yasnaya Polyana to paint portraits and simply stayed on. Yulia Ivanovna laughed a great deal, displaying large teeth and shaking her short hair, loved to tell jokes, sang popular songs in a soft bass voice, and painted horses in oils. She used to lie for hours on the sofa talking in a drawling manner, expressive of endless laziness, about anything or nothing at all.
Time passed. Important events were drawing near. In February 1901, the Holy Synod excommunicated father from the Russian Orthodox church. At that time, the Government was especially repressive. The public temper was increasingly irritated by death penalties, exiles, and censorship, and responded by students' political meetings and protests. Prohibited literature was printed and distributed. When father was excommunicated, the Russian intelligentsia seemed to rejoice at a pretext for venting their indignation against the Government. From all sides, letters, telegrams, addresses, even presents, came to our house. Men students, women students, workers, peasants, the intelligentsia, the rank and file of citizens, all of these diverse groups hastened to express to father their admiration and devotion. The two fables, "The Lion and the Asses" and "The Victorious Pigeons" [see end of this chapter for the text of the latter], in which the Government was made a laughing stock, went from hand to hand; of course, they could not be published. People stopped father in the street, greeting him with rapturous shouting. Throngs of students came to the gates of our Moscow house. I think that if the Holy Synod had considered in advance the results of its move it would not have acted as it did.
The fact of being excommunicated left father completely indifferent. But mother, who considered herself a true daughter of the Orthodox Church and father an unbeliever, felt insulted. She told anyone who cared to listen how indignant she was against the Synod and the clergy, and with her characteristic rashness wrote a letter to the Metropolitan Anthony.
Disorders broke out here and there. In Petrograd, on Kazanskiy Square, the Cossacks beat the people in a street gathering with their whips. Prince Vyazemskiy, who was present, tried to stop them, but was shoved aside and for his efforts received a reprimand from the Sovereign. Father was greatly touched by Vyazemskiy's act and wrote him a letter. shortly afterward, in retaliation for the protests against the flogging, the Government closed down the "Writers' Union". Again, an address was written which father and people of our acquaintance signed. A revolutionary mood came over all of us. But as soon as I tried to take part in the general agitation, people stopped me: "Wait -- you're too young. don't bother your head over it."
Finally Misha Sukhotin, my sister's stepson, and I abandoned our studies and devoted ourselves to distributing forbidden literature. An endless number of times we copied by hand the two satiric fables and distributed them among friends, inscribing the top with big letters: "Request to hand on." We also tried to copy father's articles, "Reply to the Synod" and "to the Tsar and His Helpers", but this was such a task that I finished only one copy of the "Reply" and handed it to my history teacher for further distribution.
Misha and I looked about for more efficient methods of work and, one day, on coming home from the gymnasium, Misha told me that he had got hold of a hectograph and would bring it home after dark. All through the evening, I could not stay still. Every ring of the doorbell sent me flying the dark corridor to see who was coming. It was late when Misha brought the case, and we carried it quietly through the pantry to his room. When everybody had gone to bed, we started work. The article had to be copied in hectograph ink and impressed on gelatine, from which the printing was to be done. We spoiled the first sheets; the work just wouldn't go. but, little by little, we settled down to it, and it went smoothly. Something like a hundred copies could be printed. We worked several nights. We issued one "edition," as we proudly called it, of the "Reply to the Synod", several editions of the two fables, and began printing the article "To the Tsar and His Helpers". But we were not destined to finish this. Someone in the house had spied on us and told mother that we were staying up nights and probably doing something we shouldn't.
We were so carried away by the work that we never heard someone come to the door and push it open.
"What are you doing here?" Mother stood on the threshold. Her eyebrows were knitted, her lips tightly pressed, her eyes flashing with anger.
"We-- we-- we are printing--"
"What?"
"Printing--"
Misha tried to look casual and began to explain that we could not remain indifferent to the general protest against the act of the Synod, that we wished to spread the ideas of Lev Nikolayevich, and so forth. But mother only knitted her eyebrows tighter. It seemed to me that everything around us shook when the storm of her wrath broke over our heads. She was going to chase Misha out of our house, to lock me up in a room, and to throw out the hectograph.
"How did you dare to bring a hectograph into the house?" she shouted. "You know very well it's prohibited. And what if they searched the house and found this nasty business and all of us were put into prison because of you? What then?"
In the morning, Misha took the hectograph back. I was forbidden to enter his room. But we saved our edition of the "Reply to the Synod" and gave it to father for distribution. He was not angry and only laughed good naturedly over our attempt at revolutionary work.
The Victorious Pigeons
How all the trouble started, this I truly could not tell; I only know that seven humble pigeons, learning that the lion Did not desire to keep their customs holy And even dared -- such was his boldness! -- To live as lions do, Resolved to exclude him from their feathery flock. No longer is it secret That to the lion a decree was sent Forbidding him ever to fly with pigeons Until, like them, he learns to coo And pick up crumbs. The pigeons now triumph: "O miracle, the victory is ours! "We truly dealt his justice to the lion! "And in our persons we contrive to join "The serpent's gentleness, the wisdom of a fowl!"
We might perchance, be asked the question: "Pray, where lies victory, we fail to see . . .?" but since the rumor has it That to the Holy Ghost himself these pigeons are related, Let anyone who would remain unscathed Make no such queries bold, But from his own appointed cote Sing praise to pigeons blest -- To pigeons, BEARERS OF VICTORY!*
*The name of Pobedonostsev, at that time head of the Holy Synod and moving spirit of many reactionary measures, meant "bearer of victory".
Like a clear ray of light, Aunt tatyana Andreyevna Kuzminskaya went through all my life, from early childhood to the last hard years of revolution, when she was the only person near me at Yasnaya Polyana. When I was little, the Kuzminskiy family used to come to Yasnaya Polyana every summer. That meant a merry, noisy time, as their family was almost as large as ours. And Aunt Tanya was the first to invest all kinds of pastimes -- going for mushrooms, or bathing, or picnicking, or dining at somebody's house, and then inviting them to our home. We used to be a trifle afraid of tall and handsome Aleksandr Mikhailovich Kuzminskiy, auntie's husband and my godfather. But we adored auntie. "Aunt Sonya", "Aunt Tanya", rang perpetually through the house. Sometimes we children got the tow mixed up and called Aunt Tanya "Mother" and my mother "Aunt Sonya".
Auntie loved joy and cheer, and repulsed indignantly all that was distressing. She could not stand quarrels, disagreements, hate -- they spoiled her enjoyment, and she always tried to settle them as quickly as she could. No sooner did she discover the quarreling parties than she started making peace and did it with such fervor that she always secured her end. With the children, she used no ceremony whatever. If she found them fighting, she instantly seized them by the collars and knocked their heads together, saying angrily: "Now kiss each other, you bad things, do you hear me? Kiss each other right away, will you?" If this did not work, she gave each a poke in the neck to hasten the peace, and this was so funny that their anger evaporated.
One little picture stands out in my memory. Her youngest son and favorite, Mitichka, had a stomach ache and needed castor oil. "Mitichka," auntie was saying in a tender and imploring voice, holding before him a glass with castor oil, its edges smeared with lemon juice. "Mitichka, dear boy, drink the castor oil."
"No, no, no," Mitichka drawled with a sort of grown-up determination, making a negative gesture with his hand every time he said "no".
"Mitichka," auntie said a little more severely, "drink your castor oil!"
"No, no, no," Mitichka drawled with still greater obstinacy.
"Mitichka!" auntie exclaimed threateningly, "drink your castor oil!"
"No, no, no!" Mitichka now sounded more capricious than sure.
"Yes, yes, yes!" auntie suddenly shouted, giving Mitichka three raps in the back of his neck as she spoke, and with the other hand pouring the castor oil into his mouth. He swallowed, grimaced and choked, and she stuffed in a spoonful of raspberry jam to take away the taste.
Unfortunately, I don't remember Aunt Tanya when she was young, but I always associate her in my imagination with Natasha in "War and Peace". [Footnote: Aunt Tanya was, in fact, the prototype of Natasha Rostova in "War and Peace".] She sang as no one else did. I slept in the nursery, which was separated by two other rooms from the large hall. I would be sent to bed, but I would know that auntie was going to sing, and would wait.
The first chords come -- papa or brother Sergey at the piano -- my heart pounds. In only my nightgown I steal into the drawing room next to the hall.
That marvel, not to be forgotten,
When first you stood before my eyes --
She sings the famous song by Glinka with words by Pushkin. I know every note of it. My breath stops, everything around me seems to assume new meaning; something strange is happening within me, I feel new possibilities within myself, a force which grows, swells, presses me.
She has finished. Praise and exclamations seem superfluous; they would break the spell. Now she begins father's favorite song:
When I hear thy voice
Ringing so tenderly,
Like a bird in a cage,
My heart leaps joyfully.
When I meet thy eyes
Deep and blue as the sky,
My soul pleads to leave my breast
Flying to meet their gaze.
Merry and bright I feel,
And yet I wish to weep.
Ah, if only I could
'Round thee throw my arms.
[Footnote: Music by Balakirev; words by Lermontov.]
"Excellent, excellent," I hear father's voice. "Marvelous!" I stand there in my nightgown, shivering with emotion, and a feeling which I cannot define with words swells higher and higher within me.
Then I recall our lighted ballroom, and mother and auntie, hand in hand, raising their skirts daintily and dancing the old-time polka -- one, two, forward; one, two, backward. They separate, then join again, their cheeks and eyes glowing. auntie is slender and small, mother's appearance is spoiled a little by her enlarged, protruding stomach; but both of them are beautiful at the moment. They finish, flushed and embarrassed but satisfied, and take their seats again, and the rest of us applaud.
More than once I heard father, looking at auntie, so radiant, so glad of living, say to her: "Tanya, you know you will die sometime!"
"What nonsense!" she would exclaim indignantly. "Never!"
Father enjoyed this answer immensely, and laughed so that the tears flowed.
Then auntie remained alone. Her children left home one by one; her husband died. In 1917, after the October Revolution, a group of workers broke into his apartment in Petrograd. He rose from his seat and stood before them, erect with all his great height, called out in a loud voice, and fell unconscious. The stroke soon finished him. Aunt Tanya came to live at Yasnaya Polyana. [Footnote: In 1921, Yasnaya Polyana was nationalized by the Soviet Government, and a museum, a school, and a hospital were started, of which I was director.] Through those hard, hungry, terrible years, she stayed there and was my only comfort. Spoiled, accustomed to refuse herself nothing, auntie now chewed slices of feed beets and rejoiced immensely when good luck brought her a piece of meat or cheese. She became thin as a skeleton; I could lift her easily, and, when her heart began to fail, I used to carry her upstairs in my arms. Once in a while, I would get hold of a piece of chocolate or a little coffee at Moscow or Tula and bring it to her, and she was as jubilant as a child. Luckily, I succeeded in getting the Government to grant her a pension of forty rubles a month; out of this, she not only sent some to her son but helped him besides by taking his little boy to Yasnaya Polyana, where she brought up her grandson in the old-fashioned way, giving foremost attention to foreign languages.
In her last years, Aunt Tanya wrote the memoirs which have been published in Russian and are now being translated into other languages. She hurried with them, fearing that death would overtake her before she finished them. Sometimes when I entered her room, she lifter her face from this work and, with her glasses pushed up on her forehead, smiled at me with gleaming eyes; I could see that my coming had just recalled her from another world, one that had disappeared long ago.
"Still writing, auntie? Aren't you very tired?"
"No, no, that's nothing -- I may die and never finish it," she replied.
She was now seventy-five years old. On January 12, 1925 -- the day of St. Tatyana -- she wrote to her son that she felt sad; it was her saint's day, but she wouldn't remind anybody of it; there was no money, nothing could be bought, anyway, to celebrate. But we all remembered it perfectly. I left for Tula in the morning and brought back a heap of good things. Cabbage and meat pies were being baked in the kitchen.
"What is it they are doing in the kitchen?" auntie asked the old woman who took care of her.
"Nothing special," the old woman answered, for we had taken her into the secret. "Nikolayevna is cooking the dinner."
In the evening the big hall -- now the Museum -- usually so bleak, revived once more. A white cloth was spread on the table, the old family samovar of the Tolstoy sputtered and steamed again, candy and flowers, pies, fruit, and even a bottle of port were at one end of the table. At the other end were presents. Every one of the employees [Footnote: The teachers, librarians, hospital workers, etc.] brought something: writing paper, eau de Cologne, coffee, a piece of roast beef, whatever each could hunt up in those lean years. When all had gathered, we went to fetch auntie. We had left the big hall in darkness. "It's strange," she pouted, "they come especially for me, and they don't even light a lamp." At just that moment the hall was lighted. When she saw all of us in our best clothes, the table set and the presents on it, auntie became greatly upset, cried, ran to everyone, kissing and thanking each, and then ran back to her room to change into a light-colored dress.
That evening she sang once more. My cousin, Elena Sergeyevna Denisenko, accompanied her. Auntie's voice vibrated, she was unable to reach some of the high notes. She was flushed and agitated. Where the tempo should be accelerated she poked Elena Sergeyevna in the back.
When I hear thy voice,
Ringing so tenderly...
I listen and wanted to cry. When she finished, I flung my arms around her neck. "Auntie, darling," I remember saying, "don't die! Only don't die! What am I going to do without you?" "No, no," she comforted me, "of course not."
A few days later, when all had gathered for dinner, auntie came in and sat quietly on the sofa. Suddenly someone said, "What is the matter with Tatyana Andreyevna?" I jumped up. She was sagging slowly to one side. She was carried upstairs; her right hand hung lifeless, her tongue was paralyzed. In a few days she was dead.
As we were carrying her coffin out of the house and tears ran down my cheeks, I suddenly remembered: "Tanya, but you will die sometime!" "What nonsense! Never!"
I was fifteen years old when for the first time I came close to father. I consider that time as the beginning of my intimacy with him, which increased as the years went by.
It was the sixth week of Lent. The church bells tolled all over Moscow, the vesper service was just over. I was walking home from the service I had attended in a small church where a beautiful choir of blind girls sang. They sang very well, especially one girl with very blond hair and a sad face. There was such sorrow and yearning in her voice that it even sounded a little weird.
In early youth we often experience a state of ecstatic emotion, when it seems that one loves everybody, and that one is so very kind and good that all the others cannot help loving you. This was the mood that possessed me as I left the church that evening. I felt light at heart and joyful. Next to me at the service had stood a bent, beggarly little old woman with a shaking head. I did little things for her: fastened her candles before the sacred images, brought her a chair, helped her down the steps. Her black cloak, greenish from wear, smelled moldy, and, as I stood behind her, I noticed big lice crawling in her yellowish-gray hair and on the collar of her cloak. "And though she is so dirty and smells so bad, I love her and am helping her," I thought, feeling more and more deeply touched by my own virtue. "Tomorrow is Friday -- I shall go to confession and shall be cleansed of all sins." I tried to remember all that I had to confess to the priest.
I walked quickly along the street, my heels beating a clear rhythm against the sidewalk; and unexpectedly, face to face, I met father. He was walking unhurriedly, with a cane in his hand, wearing a soft gray had and an unbuttoned overcoat under which showed a white linen blouse.
"Where are you coming from?" he asked me.
"From church." His gray, deep, all-understanding eyes met mine for a minute. His glance made me shrivel inside.
"Why are you wearing such a bright red necktie?"
I said nothing. Once more he looked at me attentively, and then went on. "Why are you wearing such a bright red necktie?" I repeated to myself. "Bright red -- yes, very bright -- not a modest but a bad necktie." I felt sad; something contracted in my heart. "A bad necktie -- and I -- am I good? No, bad, bad. Sort of false, insincere --"
I went home deep in thought; my body felt heavy and seemed ugly and uncouth. I loathed myself, yet tried all the time to understand what had happened. No trace was left of the ecstatic, deeply moved, and contented mood which I had just enjoyed. Inwardly I flayed myself, subjecting all my acts and feelings to the severest criticism. "Very well," I said to myself, "and would you give all you possess to that unwashed little old woman? No, never! But if not, then what is the value of your sentimental attentions to her and your touched, virtuous mood?"
Sometimes complicated spiritual processes take place within us, independently of our desires and unknown to us; and the slightest external impulse suffices to change the direction of our thoughts and feelings. Perhaps this was what had happened to me. I could no longer look at things simply, whether it was my own self or anything that surrounded me. I began observing and analyzing.
In this keyed-up mood, I went to church the next day with mother. After a short vesper service, the priest called for those of the congregation who wished to come to confession. Mother and I stood behind all the others. The little old woman of yesterday was directly ahead of us. She was leaning on her cane; she changed her weight from one foot to the other and sighed, and her head trembled more than ever. Evidently she was very tired. The priest came out. The little old woman took a few steps toward him, but the priest walked past all those who were waiting for him and approached mother. "Please come up, Countess," he said to her, bowing respectfully and letting us pass ahead. The little old woman backed up submissively. "And this is a priest, a servant of Got!" I thought, and revolt seized me.
During confession, I no longer felt the assurance that the priest had the power to set me free of my sins. I saw in him only an ordinary, sinning human person like anyone else. I resented answering his questions: "Did I curse anybody? Did I tell lies? Was I obedient to my elders?" "What business of his is all this?" I thought, and replied as laconically as I could, "I have sinned, father, Yes, I have sinned."
I came home that evening in a still more confused mood. Here s tragedy awaited me. As I entered my room, I felt at once an unaccustomed stillness. I looked at my bird cage -- it was empty. Where was my finch? He was a tame, little bird, used to flying all over my room, and not infrequently started his song while sitting on my head or shoulder. Where was he? I could not find him in the room and went to ask the maid whether she had seen him. Just then, I heard a crunching sound behind the screen that concealed the maid's bed. On the bed sat a gray cat, Mashka, purring delightedly and finishing the last bits of my finch. Tiny yellow feathers were on the bed covers. I grabbed a stick and, beside myself, began to beat the cat, madly chasing her all over the room. I would have killed her if she had not managed to jump out the window into the street. Rage contracted my throat, my heart thumped. And suddenly I remembered that I had just come from confession. "Nonsense, trifles, all of it!" But I felt even worse and could not stand it any longer. I fell with my face on the pillow and sobbed violently.
The next morning I was attired in a white gown, and mother and I went to Holy Communion. When we entered, the church was already full. We managed with difficulty to make our way forward. The customary long service began. I followed the liturgy with critical attention and caught every word of the priest. His appearances from the altar doors, his motions, his sacramental phrases, the gospel reading which was unintelligible, everything aroused my doubts. "And this is communion," I thought. "Whoever puts more money on the plate gets more wine and sacred bread."
On the Saturday before Palm Sunday, when mother called to me to get ready for vespers, I told her that I was not going. She did not understand me at first.
"Why? Don't you feel well?"
"I'm all right, but I am not going to church any more."
"But |
