The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (15 page)

On my way home I thought of my enemies and prayed for them, and decided to write a friendly letter to Biryukov. I have decided to send Masha to help the families of those peasants who are in jail for stealing the wood.

 

17th January
. I was feeling lazy this morning and got up late. Over dinner we had a frivolous discussion about what would happen if the masters and servants changed places for a week. Lyovochka scowled and went downstairs; I went and asked him what the matter was and
he said: “That was a stupid discussion about a sacred matter. It's agony for me to be surrounded by servants, and very painful that this should be turned into a joke, especially in front of the children.”

 

18th January
. I had a dreadful scene with Nurse. She was very rude to me yesterday and has been neglecting the baby. She is driving me desperate. I was feeling ill and told her I wouldn't be insulted by a hussy. At that she said something so appallingly vulgar that were I not so besotted with Vanechka I would have sacked her on the spot. The poor little boy, sensing an argument, clung to her skirt and wouldn't leave her, saying, “Maman good, Maman good!” If only we were all little children! I gave Misha a lesson and did some copying. I didn't go to bed, although I was groaning with pain and could eat nothing. This part of Lyovochka's diaries, about the Crimean War and Sevastopol, is so interesting. One page, which had been torn out, struck me particularly. A woman wants
marriage
and a man wants
lechery
, and the two can never be reconciled. No
marriage
can be happy if the husband has led a debauched life. It is astonishing that ours has survived at all. It was my childish ignorance that made it possible for us to be happy. Instinctively I closed my eyes to his past, and deliberately, in my own interests, didn't read all his diaries and asked no questions. If I had, it would have destroyed both of us. He doesn't know this, or that it was my purity that saved us, but I know now that this is true. Those scenes from his past, that casual debauchery, and his casual attitude to it, is poisonous, and would have a terrible effect on a woman who hadn't enough to keep her busy. After reading these diaries a woman might feel: “So this is what you were like! Your past has defiled me
—this
is what you get for that!”

 

19th January
. I am still ill; I have a stomach ache and a temperature. I have observed a connecting thread between Lyovochka's old diaries and his
Kreutzer Sonata
. I am a buzzing fly entangled in this web, sucked of its blood by the spider.

 

25th January
. I got up early this morning, despite being unwell and having a bad cold, and drove to Tula. It was a warm day. At the footbridge I met Lyovochka, bright and cheerful, already returning from his walk. I love meeting him, especially unexpectedly. I had various things to attend to in Tula. I collected the payment for the timber, came to an understanding with the Ovsyannikovo priest,
acceding to all his claims and virtually agreeing to the division of the land. I visited the Raevskys, the Sverbeevs and Maria Zinovieva, at whose house I met Arsenev, the local marshal of the nobility. For two years now I have noticed people treating me like an
old woman
. It feels strange, but doesn't greatly bother me. What a powerful habit it becomes, feeling one has the power to make people treat one with a certain sympathy—if not admiration. And I need even more respect and affection from people these days.

It occurred to me this evening as I was correcting the proofs for
The Kreutzer Sonata
* that when a woman is young she loves with her whole heart, and gladly gives herself to the man she loves because she sees what pleasure it gives him. Later in her life she looks back, and suddenly realizes that this man loved her only when he needed her. And she remembers all the times his affection turned to harshness or disgust the moment he was satisfied.

And when the woman, having closed her eyes to all this, also begins to experience these needs, then the old sentimental, passionate love passes away and she becomes like him—i.e. passionate with her husband at certain times, and demanding that he satisfy her. She is to be pitied if he no longer loves her by then; and he is to be pitied if he can no longer satisfy her. This is the reason for all those family crises and separations, so unexpected and so ugly, which happen in later life. Happiness comes only when will and spirit prevail over the body and the passions.
The Kreutzer Sonata
is untrue in everything relating to a young woman's experiences. A younger woman has none of that sexual passion, especially when she is busy bearing and feeding her children. Only once in every two years is she a real woman! Her passion awakes only in her thirties.

I returned from Tula at about six and dined alone. Lyovochka came out to meet me but we missed each other, which was sad. He has been more affectionate lately, but I have deceived myself time and again about this, and I cannot help feeling it's for the same old reasons: his health is better and the usual passions are aroused.

I worked hard all evening correcting the proofs for
The Kreutzer Sonata
and the postscript, then did the accounts. I made a list of everything I had to do in Moscow: seeds, shopping, business.

 

26th January
. I got up at ten. Save me Lord, from the sinful dreams that woke me.

 

4th February
. A lot has happened recently. On the night of the 27th
I left for Moscow. My adventures there were of no great interest. On my first day I dined with our friends the Mamonovs. The following morning I paid 7,600 rubles into the Moscow Bank and redeemed the Grinevka estate, then delivered the mortgage papers to the Bank of the Nobility. I dined with Fet and prattled on far too long, stupidly complaining that Lyovochka didn't love me enough. I returned home that evening, and Tanya, Lyova, Vera Petrovna and Lily Obolenskaya visited. I visited the Servertsevs; Uncle Kostya and the Meshcherinovs were there too, and we had a discussion about love and marriage. But my main preoccupation is Lyova, his complicated inner existence, his attempts to write, and his completely joyless attitude to life. He read me a short story he has written called ‘Montecristo', which was very touching and affected me deeply—more of a children's story really*—and it suddenly occurred to me what a wonderful thing it was that if I should survive Lyovochka, all the things I had lived for, the artistic world that has always surrounded me, would not be lost. I shall still be involved through my son with all the fascinating things that have filled my life. But it is all God's will!

I was disturbed on my return home to find Misha Stakhovich there, and he confessed to me, much to my amazement, his longstanding love for Tanya: “
J'ai longtemps tâché de mériter Tatyana Lvovna, mais elle ne m'a jamais donné aucun espoir
.”* We had always imagined he wanted to marry Masha, and when I told Tanya I could see she was deeply upset. I would be so happy if Tanya married him though, as I like him more than any other young man I know.

We are all very cheerful these days. Kern and his wife visited, as well as the Raevsky boys, Dunaev and Almazov. The children went tobogganing all over the countryside on upturned benches, and I called on blind Evlania, the mother of Lyova's servant Mitrokha, and told her all about him.

I taught the children today: Andryusha had done no work while I was away, and I lost my temper and sent him out of the room. Lord, how he torments me! Lyovochka is not very well, but he rode to Yasenki today, and after dinner he played some Chopin. Nobody else moves me so much on the piano; he always plays with such extraordinary feeling and perfect phrasing. Masha suddenly made up her mind to go to Pirogovo, but I am not letting her go because she has a sore throat and it's cold—15° below freezing. I wonder if she was distressed to hear that Stakhovich loves Tanya; for so long everyone believed it was her he loved.

Tanya went to Tula with Miss Lydia to have another photograph
taken; Stakhovich had asked for her picture and she eagerly agreed. She is very excited, but once again it is in God's hands…

 

6th February
. I got up at 10. I had been dreaming of my little son Petya who died; Masha had brought him from somewhere, and he was all torn and mutilated. He was already as big as Misha, and bore a great resemblance to him. We were overjoyed to see each other, and all day I have been seeing him as he was when he was ill, lying in the darkness. I cut out and sewed some trousers for Andryusha and Misha, and had finished both pairs by evening. Later on Lyovochka read us Schiller's
Don Carlos
* while I knitted. It is now 11 and he has ridden to Kozlovka to collect the post. The girls have gone to bed; both of them are upset and slightly unhappy about Mikhail Stakhovich's declaration of love. I am reading
La Physiologie de l'amour moderne
.* I haven't fully grasped what it's about yet, as I have only just started it, but I don't like it.

Lyovochka adores Vanechka and plays with him. This evening he put first him then Sasha into an empty basket, shut the lid and carted it around the house with Andryusha and Misha. He
plays
with all the children, but he never
looks after
them.

 

7th February
. Lyovochka is being stiff, sullen and unpleasant again. I was silently angry with him last night. He kept me up until two in the morning and spent such a long time washing downstairs that I thought he must be ill, for washing is quite an event for him. I try to see his spiritual side, but I can do this only when he is being good to me.

 

9th February
. Yesterday evening my wish was granted and I drove to Kozlovka by sledge in the moonlight. There were just the two of us, Lyovochka and I. Tanya seems a little better, although she still has a temperature of 38.6. My darling little Vanechka has been ill too with a temperature. I made him a sailor suit, gave the children a two-hour music lesson and read Beketov's pamphlet
On Man's Present and Future Nourishment
.* He predicts universal vegetarianism and I think he is right. Vanechka is coughing and it distresses me to hear him.

 

10th February
. Tanya was groaning from morning to dinner time with a terrible headache, then her temperature went up to 38.5 again. Vanechka too had a temperature this morning, it was 39.3. What a strange mysterious sickness! I can't say I'm
too
anxious about my patients, but I do feel sorry for them. I don't feel very well either, and
couldn't sleep last night. Today I copied out Lyovochka's Sevastopol diaries,* which are very interesting, then took my knitting and sat with the two invalids. I examined Andryusha on this week's lesson, which he hadn't learnt. Masha has opened a school for the riff-raff in “that house”,* and the children have been flocking there for lessons. Sasha has been going there for her lessons too while Tanya is ill. Misha has a new watch and is terribly pleased with it. I see almost nothing of Lyovochka. He is writing about art and science again.* He showed me an article today in
Open Court
which accused him of living at variance with his teachings and handing over his property to his
wife
. “And we all know how people in general, and Russians in particular, treat their wives,” they wrote. “A wife has no mind of her own.” Lyovochka is very upset, but it's all the same to me—I'm used to this sniping.

 

12th February
. All the children were ill today, with various ailments: Tanya and Masha have stomach aches, Misha has a toothache, Vanechka has a rash and Andryusha has a fever and has been vomiting. Only Sasha is happy and well. I have been copying Lyovochka's diary. He has told me several times that he didn't like me copying them, but I thought to myself, “Well, you'll just have to put up with it since you've lived such a disgusting life.” Today he brought it up again, and said I didn't realize how much I was hurting him, he wanted to destroy the diaries—how would I like to be constantly reminded of everything that tormented me, every bad deed? To which I replied that I wasn't a bit sorry for him, and if he wanted to burn them, let him—I put no value on my own labours. But if one were to say which of us caused the other more pain, then it was he, for he hurt me
so
deeply when he published his latest story* to the entire world that it would be hard for us ever to be quits. His weapons are so much more powerful. He wants the world to see him on the pedestal he has built for himself, but his diaries cast him down into the filth of his past, and that infuriates him.*

I don't know why people connect
The Kreutzer Sonata
with our married life, but this is what has happened, and now everyone, from the Tsar himself down to Lev Nikolaevich's brother and his best friend Dyakov, feels sorry for me. And it isn't just other people—I too know in my heart that this story is directed against me, and that it has done me a great wrong, humiliated me in the eyes of the world and destroyed the last vestiges of love between us. All this when not once in my whole married life have I ever wronged my husband, with
so much as a gesture or glance at another man! Whether or not I ever had it in my heart to love another man—and whether or not this was a struggle for me—is a different matter, and that is
my
business. No one in the world has the right to pry into my secrets so long as I have remained pure.

I don't know why, but today I decided to let Lev Nikolaevich know my feelings about
The Kreutzer Sonata
. He wrote it so long ago, but he would have had to know sooner or later what I thought about it, and it was after he had reproached me for “causing him so much suffering” that I decided to speak up about
my
suffering.