The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (37 page)

We all had tea on the terrace together this evening, then set off to the station to meet Dora's parents, who didn't arrive till late at night.

L.N. wasn't very well at Grinevka, and had a high backache and heartburn. He was better today though. He is working hard to develop his muscles, doing gymnastics with his dumb-bells, swimming in the pond and washing on the bank. He eats so poorly and so little—then grumbles and panics and groans, wraps himself in his quilted dressing gown and talks about death, which terrifies him.

It's fine and cool, especially at night. A bright moon in a clear sky, dry and dusty again—we'll have another bad harvest!

A telegram from Tanya to say she is arriving tomorrow. Misha continues to pass his exams, thank God! I shall go and see him the day after tomorrow.

 

20th May
. What a dazzling, beautiful spring! Fine sunny days, bright moonlit nights, the lilacs, extraordinarily thick and white this year, drifting apple blossom, nightingales…It enchants and intoxicates us, we try to grasp these fleeting impressions of the beauty of spring, and regret them eternally.

Dora's dear kind parents, the Westerlunds, arrived yesterday. How pleased she was to see them, the dear little girl with her big stomach, her domestic worries and her concern for their comfort.

My Tanya came this morning looking pale and listless, talking of nothing but love, her desire to have children and the difficulties of being unmarried.

I feel comfortable and happy with her. We know each other through and through, and love and understand each other.

A still moonlit night. The days are hot again, and the nights warm. I reread the life and teachings of Socrates with new understanding. All great people are alike: their genius is a deformity, an infirmity, because it is exceptional. There is no harmony in people of genius, and their unbalanced characters are a torment to others.

 

22nd May
. I arrived in Moscow this morning.

 

25th May
. Whit Sunday. Misha has gone to the Martynovs. He has passed his exams—just. I went with Nurse to Nikolskoe to visit the graves of Alyosha and Vanechka. We planted flowers and edged them with turf. I then said the Lord's Prayer, and silently begged my infants to pray to God to forgive my sick and sinful soul.

It was a bright cheerful day, and the peasants were in a festive mood. A little girl took me to a nearby convent, where I chatted with the nuns. One of them said she had been “in love with Christ” from an early age, and was possessed by the notion that she should remain in every way the “bride of Christ” and of no one else.

There was absolutely no “atmosphere” about this place, with its neatly laid-out little garden, the peasants, and the countryside and dachas near by. We returned to Moscow late that evening.

 

26th, 27th, 28th, 29th May
. Proofs, solitude, sadness. I was playing the piano in the corner room one evening, longing to see Sergei Ivanovich again and hear him play, when through the window I saw three figures approaching. I didn't recognize them at first, then saw to my amazement that it was Maslov, Taneev's pupil Yusha Pomerantsev and Taneev himself. Maslov left first, and Yusha played to me. Then Sergei Ivanovich played his songs, and he and Yusha played his quartet as a piano duet.

 

30th May
. Speech day at the Conservatoire. A hot, sunny day. A Schumann sonata, the Saint-Saëns piano concerto and various minor pieces were beautifully performed by the women students Friedman, Bessy and young Gediker, and gave me enormous pleasure. There wasn't a single person who didn't come up to me afterwards and say: “How young you look today!” or “Oh, you look so fresh!” or “It makes one cheerful just to look at you…” This was largely thanks to my new pale-lilac muslin dress. But I always find it very pleasant, I am ashamed to say, when the public comment on my youthful appearance and say friendly things to me.

I arrived home and went out on to the balcony, and who should I see but Sergei Ivanovich, sitting on a bench in the garden reading the newspaper. I was terribly pleased. Dinner had been laid in the garden for Misha and me, and they laid a third place for him. And what a nice cheerful dinner we had. We were all hungry, and it was delightfully cosy and fresh outside! After dinner the three of us strolled around the garden together. Sergei Ivanovich told us stories about the Caucasus, and Misha, who was leaving the next day, was fascinated. Misha went off and left the two of us together, and we drank tea and Sergei Ivanovich played me some variations composed by Kolya Zhilyaev, a pupil of his. Then we sat and talked, as people talk when they trust each other completely—frankly, seriously, without shyness or stupid jokes. We talked only of things that genuinely interested us, and there wasn't a dull or awkward moment.

What an evening it was! It was my last in Moscow—and perhaps the last such evening in my life.

At nine o' clock he stood up to go and I didn't hold him back. He took his leave, merely saying wistfully: “One has to go some time.” I didn't reply—I wanted to cry. I saw him to the door, then went out to the garden. Then I packed, tidied and locked up, and at midnight we set off for Yasnaya.

 

31st May
. A dismal reception at Yasnaya this morning. No Tanya, no Lev Nikolaevich, just three telegrams announcing that he was ill and was staying with the Levitskys!

 

1st June
. Lev Nikolaevich didn't return. I wept all day, then feeling quite ill I set off with Maria Schmidt first for Tula, via Kozlovka, then took the Syzran-Vyazma line train to Karasei, where I arrived early this morning, hired a coach and went straight to the Levitskys. Lev Nikolaevich was very ill and weak, and it was unthinkable that he should go home.

 

2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th June (at the Levitskys)
. A wonderful family, busy, liberal in a good sense, him especially—a clever, strong-minded man.

It's hard nursing and caring for L.N. and cooking his complicated vegetarian diet in a strange house. I sent for the doctor, and we gave him bismuth with opium and applied compresses. It was dreary, cold and exasperating. Lev Nikolaevich was already ill when he left. What sort of folly is this? He should be ashamed of making a nuisance of himself in another person's house, making a lot of complicated
and outlandish demands for things like almond milk, rusks, porridge oats, special bread and so on.

 

6th June
. When we returned to Yasnaya I had a bad cough and felt weak and exhausted from looking after him.

We spent the night at the house of the Ershovs, who weren't at home. A dreadful thing has happened! A young woman called Tulubyova (born Ershova) threw herself into the river there in a fit of depression and drowned herself. I envied her courage. Life is very hard.

 

8th June
. At 12.45 today Dora gave birth to a son. How she suffered, poor girl, how she pleaded with her father in her guttural young voice to give her something. Lyova was very gentle with her and reassured her, and she was so sweet and loving with him, pressing herself close to him as if begging him to share her suffering. And he did, and so little Lev was born, a normal, healthy birth.

 

11th June
. I had the grand piano moved into Tanya's studio and played for three hours today and wept bitterly, overcome with a helpless desire to hear Sergei Ivanovich's music once more. How happy those two summers* were after the death of Vanechka! To think that after such a frightful tragedy I should have been sent such a consolation! I thank the Lord for that joy.

 

12th June
. I was wondering today why there were no women writers, artists or composers of genius. It's because all the passion and abilities of an energetic woman are consumed by her family, love, her husband—and especially her children. Her other abilities are not developed, they remain embryonic and atrophy. When she has finished bearing and educating her children her artistic needs awaken, but by then it's too late, and it's impossible to develop anything.

Young girls often develop spiritual and artistic powers, but these powers remain isolated and cannot be carried on by subsequent generations, since girls do not create posterity. Geniuses often have older mothers, who developed their talents early in life, and Lev Nikolaevich is one of these; his mother was no longer young when she married and had him.

 

14th June
. I spent the day with my children. My grandson Lev was christened at 1 o' clock. Dora was very agitated, and the Swedish
grandparents were horrified by our primitive Russian christening ceremony.

We dined very grandly in the garden, with fruit, bunches of flowers and champagne on the table, and the weather was lovely and sunny. Then everyone played tennis, including L.N. He is not flagging, and his health is completely restored, thank God. Masha and Kolya left this evening, and Ilya left with Misha, whom I was terribly sorry to part with. Yet the feeling that
he isn't mine
, that loving him will bring nothing but sorrow, makes me afraid to love him, and I deliberately withdraw from him.

 

18th June
. Sasha's 14th birthday. An unbearably hot day—40 degrees in the sun at 2 this afternoon. L.N. is still ill, with bad heartburn and a temperature of 38.3. This evening he improved a little and his temperature dropped to 37.5; he ate two plates of porridge and drank some coffee.

I raced down to the Voronka with Sasha for a swim. It was a wonderful evening, and I couldn't stop gazing at the glorious countryside, the sky and the moon.

When I got home I found L.N. dictating a newspaper article to Tanya, which they subsequently decided not to send. Then 6 girls and boys, gymnasium pupils from Kharkov, arrived at Yasnaya with 100 rubles which they wanted to give to the needy peasants. L.N. sent them to the priest, who is the guardian of this area, and the man told them which peasants were the poorest. The girls and boys then went to Yasenki to buy flour to give to the poor peasants. But the sergeant and the district police officer appeared and strictly forbade the Yasenki merchant to supply flour to the peasants in exchange for the credit notes we had given them. It's outrageous! Let no one in Russia give alms to the poor—the police won't allow it! Tanya and I were deeply distressed, and would willingly have gone straight to the Tsar or his mother and warned them against the anger that may arise in the people.

 

20th June
. Lev Nikolaevich is still ill. He has only a slight fever, 37.8, but is burning hot and still very thin and weak. His stomach aches only when he moves or puts pressure on it. Last night I massaged it for a long time with camphor oil, then we applied spirit of camphor compresses and I gave him some bismuth with soda and morphine. He ate a plate of porridge today, some rice gruel made with half almond milk and half ordinary milk (without telling him), and
Doctor Westerlund finally, after three days, managed to persuade him to eat an egg.

The district police officer was here enquiring about the Kharkov schoolgirls and boys who came here wanting to help the peasants and work with them. They have all disappeared without trace, but two more little girls, one of whom was only 13 years old, arrived here today with the same purpose. They have all been banished from the district, and I gave the officer a piece of my mind for forbidding the merchant at to sell them flour. The priest had ordered that it should be given to the poorest inhabitants of our area, and it is already paid for.

I read four pages of proofs. My eyes are growing weaker.

 

21st June
. What with all these illnesses and anxieties I have made a terrible mess of Volume 15 of the 9th expensive edition; I am very worried about it and cannot think how to extricate myself. I forgot that what stands as the appendix to Volume 13 wasn't included in the expensive edition, and I went straight into Volume 14 without including it. Now I shall have to add it at the end, regardless of chronological sequence. I have too much to hold in my head. It's all right so long as everything else is going well. But “even the old woman has a blunder up her sleeve”, as the saying goes, and I really have blundered this time. And it's all because of Lev Nikolaevich being ill, and having to travel all over the place to nurse him.

There's an eclipse of the moon, which I can see through the window…It's already moving away…

 

22nd June
. Peasant women have been at the porch all day begging for flour, money, a bit of bread to eat, a little tea, medicine, and so on. I try patiently to give them what they want, but I'm exhausted. It's impossible to help them. I spent the whole day running up and down the stairs, looking after Lev Nikolaevich and attending to business, and by this evening I was half dead. As I massaged L.N.'s stomach I was dreaming of the sea and rocks and mountains of Norway, where we have been invited to stay with the Westerlunds, who are leaving tomorrow.

 

26th June
. I spent an extremely difficult afternoon yesterday. Our young neighbour Bibikov has appropriated the land we bought from his father, and we now have to defend ourselves, and the court case has started. Yesterday they had to collect all the local witnesses, but the only
witnesses called were from the village of Telyatinki, which belongs to Bibikov. It was quite obvious that the witnesses, the judge and the land-surveyor had all been bribed and feasted by Bibikov yesterday, and the whole case was conducted in the most corrupt fashion. At first I was distressed, then utterly bewildered: the judge, the questioning, the oath—it was all chicanery, from beginning to end.

I stayed out of curiosity though, sitting until late that night in the village elder's cottage. Everyone, judge and peasants, seemed to grow rather confused and subdued towards the end of the twelve peasants' interrogation: we were obviously in the right.*