The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (44 page)

I suffered a great deal emotionally. For the first time in my life I realized I might lose my husband and be left alone in the world, and that was an agonizing realization. If I thought about it too much I might fall ill myself.

Masha and Kolya are staying, as well as Andryusha and Olga, who is five months pregnant and has just lost her father.

And here too there is nothing but suffering. Andryusha is so rough, despotic and critical with dear, clever, compliant Olga. I can't bear to see her suffer; I am forever scolding and shouting at him, but he is more like a madman than a normal person at present, for he has a bad liver. The poor girl will have to suffer a lot more from that wretched inherited complaint. Lev Nikolaevich also suffered a lot from his liver, and I suffered too because of it.

I live from day to day, without any goal or serious purpose in life, and I find this exhausting. I am writing a novel,* which interests me. If I cannot please those around me I try not to poison their lives, and to bring peace and love to my family and friends.

My eyes ache, I am losing my sight. But in this, as in everything else: “
Thy
Will Be Done!” The end of 1899.

Discussions within the government about Tolstoy's excommunication. Sofia becomes trustee at a Moscow orphanage
.

 

5th November (Moscow)
. I haven't written my diary for almost a year. The hardest thing has been my failing sight. There is a broken vein in my left eye and, according to the eye specialist, an almost microscopic internal haemorrhage. I now have a permanent black circle in front of my left eye, a rheumatic pain and blurred sight. This happened on 27th May, so all reading, writing, working and any sort of strain was forbidden. A difficult six months of inactivity and ineffective treatment, with no swimming, no light and no intellectual life at all.

I have hardly played the piano, but have done a lot of exhausting work on the estate. I planted a number of trees, including some apple trees, and painfully observed our endless struggle with the peasants: their thieving and debauchery and the injustice of our rich lives, making them work for us in the rain, cold and mud, and not only adults but children too, for 15, sometimes 10 kopecks a day.

On 20th October I left with Sasha for Moscow in high spirits, looking forward to enjoying myself, meeting people, and the pleasure of seeing my beloved friends. But now I have lost heart again.

Lev Nikolaevich left Yasnaya Polyana to see his daughter Tanya in Kochety on 18th October, and returned to Moscow on 3rd November—ill, of course. The roads were icy after a month of rain and mud, and it would have been an impossibly bumpy journey. So he set out for the station on foot, but didn't know the way, and for four hours he wandered along, lost and covered in sweat, eventually getting a ride in a jolting cart which took him to the station. Now there are yet more stomach aches, massages and the rest of it.

It was pure joy when he arrived. He had been gloomy, anxious and unable to work ever since we parted. Yet before this he had been cheerful and full of energy, happily writing his play
The Corpse
* and working hard.

When I met him at the station he gazed at me and said, “How lovely you are! I'd forgotten you were so pretty!”

All yesterday and today he was putting his books and papers in order. Then
his
friends came—Gorbunov, Nakashidze, Boulanger, Dunaev and the rest of them. They are thinking of starting a journal with contributions from talentless scribblers like Chertkov and Biryukov, and they want Lev Nikolaevich to give his spiritual support to the scheme.*

I went to see Misha at his new property, and felt very sorry for him—he is so childish and shy, and has made such a clumsy start in life. I spent the summer with Tanya and the autumn with Andryusha. They're all
starting
new lives. Today I took Sasha and Misha Sukhotin to a rehearsal of Koreshchenko's
The Ice House
.* V.I. Maslova was there, as well as the Maklakovs, Sergei Ivanovich and various other friends. Things have changed somewhat with Sergei Ivanovich. We seldom meet, but when we do it's as if we never parted.

My heart has been heavy all autumn—no snow, no sun, no joy, as though I was asleep. Shall I wake up to new joys, or to death, or will some great grief arouse my joyless soul? We shall see…

This evening I prepared an enema for Lev Nikolaevich with castor oil and egg yolk, while he lectured the obsequiously attentive Goldenweiser about the European governments, which he said were becoming increasingly shameless and provocative.

 

6th November
. I got up early and visited the Krutitsky barracks on behalf of a woman who had begged me with tears in her eyes to intercede for her son, a soldier named Kamolov, who wanted to stay in Moscow. I arrived at the courtyard of a huge building, milling with young recruits, their wives and mothers, a huge crowd of people. I asked a soldier where the military commander was. “There he is!” the soldier said and pointed. And sure enough, two men were approaching. If I'd come two minutes later I couldn't have done anything, but now I was able to plead my case, which was heard very courteously, then I went on to demand the royalties due to the author of
The Fruits of Enlightenment
. This money has always gone either to the starving or to peasant victims of fires. It is now going to the latter. I received 1,040 rubles, covering several years.

I arrived home exhausted and sat down to check the accounts on the book sales. When I went out into the dining room I found Lev Nikolaevich's copier Alexander Petrovich standing by the door drunk and cursing. I quietly urged him to go to bed, but he cursed even louder, so I had to restrain him even more energetically. What an emotional ordeal this is for me! Ever since I was a child I have had a
horror of drunk people, and to this day the sight of them makes me want to cry. Lev Nikolaevich tolerates them quite easily, and when he was young I remember him laughing at old Voeikov the landlord monk when he had too much to drink, making him jump around, talk nonsense and do all sorts of tricks to amuse him.

 

12th November
. This morning I visited the orphanage where I am a patron, and took a good look at these children picked off the streets and from the drinking houses, children carelessly born to fallen girls or drunken women, children who are congenital idiots, born with fits and defects, hysterical children, abnormal children…And it occurred to me that this work I'm doing isn't really such a splendid thing after all. Is it necessary to save lives that offer no hope for the future? And according to the rules of the home, we only have to keep them till they are twelve.

Seryozha has come, and sits absorbed in chess problems for days on end. Most odd! This evening I went to the Maly Theatre with Sasha to see
The Fruits of Enlightenment
. I don't like comedies, I can never laugh—it's my great failing. We returned to find guests there.

The day before yesterday, Sergei Ivanovich came and played his symphony, arranged as a duet, with Goldenweiser.

Lev Nikolaevich told me today that when he left Tanya's house in Kochety the roads were so bad he had decided to walk to the station, but he didn't know the way and got lost. He saw some peasants and asked them to walk with him, but they were afraid of wolves and didn't want to, although one finally agreed to walk him to the main road, where Sukhotin and the Sverbeevs overtook him on their way to the station. By then he had been wandering around for four hours, and by the time he got back to Moscow he was ill and exhausted.

Then on the way he pinched his finger in the train, and the nail came off, so he has been going to the clinic ever since he got back to have it dressed, and has been unable to write for three weeks.

 

13th November
. Tanya came with her husband and visited Doctor Snegiryov, who diagnosed a completely normal pregnancy. Lev Nikolaevich was so overjoyed to see her he could hardly believe his eyes, and kept repeating: “She's back, she's back!”

Lev Nikolaevich, Misha and Seryozha went to the bathhouse this afternoon and later we all sat with Tanya; she has become a stranger to us now and is totally absorbed in material worries about the
Sukhotin family. As she herself was saying only today, “I've become a perfect Martha.”

My soul is weary and my body aches with neuralgia. It's a hard life; the inner fire that should warm my life devours it instead, for one has to smother it as soon as it bursts through.

 

15th November
. I am ill, with a cold, nausea and headache, and have stayed at home for three days. Today I played the piano for about three hours—Mendelssohn's studies,
Auf Flügeln des Gesanges
and a Beethoven sonata. We had guests all day. Much too much commotion for my poor head; worries about food, a lot of talk.

I see almost nothing of Tanya, who is completely absorbed in her husband. Lev Nikolaevich feels slightly unwell; he has a bad stomach and has had no dinner. Both he and I are in low spirits. It makes him angry and anxious whenever I see Sergei Ivanovich, but I miss him and his music—I don't want to hurt Lev Nikolaevich, but I can't help missing him dreadfully. It's all very sad.

 

20th November
. Our guests yesterday were a man from the island of Java who spoke French, and another from the Cape of Good Hope who spoke English. The first talked interestingly about Java, and told us that in the capital there were electric trams, an opera house and higher educational institutions, while in the provinces there were cannibals and heathens. This Malayan had read all of Lev Nikolaevich's philosophical works and had come here
especially
to talk to him.*

The house is full: my daughter-in-law Sonya has come with her sons Andryusha and Misha, Tanya is here with her husband and stepson, and Tanya's artist friend, Yulia Igumnova. Seryozha and Misha are here too. Yesterday there were two romances: Misha and Lina Glebova, who spent the day in our house for the first time yesterday, such a sweet, serious girl; and Sasha, who has fallen in love with Yusha Naryshkin. Who knows what
that
will lead to?

I love it when there is a lot of passion and excitement around me, but I can no longer join in as I used to. My own intense, impetuous life and my relations with my family and with outsiders have burnt out my heart and it is exhausted.

 

22nd November
. I printed photographs, tried on dresses and called on Sergei Ivanovich to examine his gymnastic equipment, and he played me two choral works he has just completed. As usual I didn't
understand them straight away; one was set to words by Tyutchev, the other to the words of Khomyakov's ‘The Stars'.*

As usual, his “
intérieure
” made a very good impression. His student Zhilyaev was sitting there busily immersed in some musical proofs, his old Nurse was asleep in her semi-darkened room, and Sergei Ivanovich came out to greet me, calm, serious and affectionate. We had a quiet talk together, and he took an affectionate, unaffected interest in everything.

Sonya came back late and I stayed up chatting with her, Tanya and Yulia Igumnova, and we all went to bed at around two in the morning.

 

23rd November
. Tanya and her husband returned to their house in the country today, intending to return to Moscow for the birth. We won't be seeing her again until the end of January. Seryozha and Misha are leaving too, and Sonya will leave tomorrow with the grandchildren. But I don't care about any of them, I'm not particularly keen to see anyone—there's just a nagging sense of something irretrievably lost, a helpless sense of the emptiness and pointlessness of existence, the absence of a close friend, the absence of love and concern.

I struggle to elicit from my husband
what
he lives for. He never tells me what he is writing or thinking, and takes less and less interest in my life.

 

24th November
. Visits to various Ekaterinas on their name day. Ekat. Davydova is ill, Ekat. Yunge is in tears because her son has been taken into the army for three years, Ekat. Dunaeva is in deep mourning for her beloved brother-in-law. More cheerful at Ekat. Ermolova's, with a lot of flowers, fine gowns and social brilliance. The dear Sverbeevs and their friends were good-natured but dull.

This evening I visited sick Marusya, and Lev Nikolaevich went to a musical evening at the lunatic asylum.* I often feel sorry for him: he seems to want music and entertainment, but his principles and his peasant shirt prevent him from going to concerts, or the theatre or anywhere else.

 

27th November
. Ill again. Stayed in bed all of the 25th and yesterday until three in the afternoon, and could barely get up. No thoughts, no desires, depression…This evening Prince Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, Dunaev, Sneserev, secretary of the
New Times
, and someone else. We talked about Eskimo dogs, and the fire at Muir and Merrilees—so dull!

Today I am a little better. I spent the day going over bills with the accountant, checked the book sales, got receipts for everything. He tried to cheat me out of 1,000 rubles, but I spotted it in time.

I was lying in bed this morning listening to the wind howling, and all at once a cock crowed, and I had a sudden vivid memory of Easter Sunday at Yasnaya Polyana; I looked out of the window and saw a red cockerel on a heap of straw crowing. I opened the ventilation window and heard the distant church bells ringing and remembered how in the old days no one in our home cursed the Church, no one condemned the Orthodox faith as Lev Nikolaevich did yesterday with Shirinsky-Shikhmatov. The Church is the idea that preserves the Deity and unites all who believe in God. The Church has created its fathers and its worshippers, those who fast and appeal to God with purified souls and prayers such as: “Our Father, Lord of Life, grant me not the spirit of idleness, sorrow, self-love and empty talk. Grant me instead the spirit of wisdom, humility, patience and love…”

 

30th November
. This morning I went to buy shoes and jerseys for my grandchildren, wool for blankets, dresses for Dora and Varenka, and plates and dishes in the sale. For two days I have been cutting out underwear and making a layette for Tanya's baby. But I don't enjoy it, I hate it, I'm tired of working.

The secretary of the orphanage visited: things aren't going well there. Some little boys were brought in yesterday and turned away because they were too young.

 

3rd December
. I have been busy with the orphanage, without success. I went there today, and for the first time since I was made a patron I felt sorry for these children. I want to organize a concert to raise money for them, but it will be hard, I'm too late, and it's such an unusual scheme.

Misha was here, and has gone elk-hunting with Ilya.

 

4th December
. Lev Nikolaevich said today he was much better and felt motivated to work again. He joked that he had been drained of all his talent by
Puzin
, and that Puzin would now be the wiser for it. This Puzin, a nobleman and horse-dealer, is a young ignoramus who lives with the Sukhotins. Lev Nikolaevich stayed in his room and slept in his bed when he visited them, and afterwards said he must have been invaded by Puzin's soul, for he couldn't work and had grown as stupid as Puzin. But today this has passed. Lev Nikolaevich has
resumed his old life now that I am looking after him, and is physically and mentally fit again.