The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lisa said. She could be so tedious.
    We paused by a thicket of bushes strung with ripe, red fruit. ‘Raspberries!’ Tanya screamed, as if she’d never seen them before.
    Lyovochka handed around pails, and we were all told to begin picking, right then and there – even Mama, who made the best of what she considered an unfortunate situation. ‘What charming raspberries,’ she said. ‘Don’t we just adore raspberries?’
    I stepped off with a pail behind one of the big bushes and had been happily, mindlessly, picking berries for a few minutes when Lyovochka sprang, like a bear, from behind a swatch of leaves.
    ‘You frighten me!’ I said.
    He took my pail away and held my hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I am.’
    ‘You should be.’
    He did not let go of my hands. ‘These are city hands,’ he said.
    He held them and looked at me for such a long time. I said, ‘Would you like a berry?’
    Like a defiant child, he plucked a berry from my pail and popped it between his coarse lips. I spotted his fat red tongue and looked away.
    ‘I must go,’ he said. And disappeared.
    Now I knew that my instincts were correct. It’s strange how one can know everything at once about the future – not the details, but the overall picture. I knew that my life would be spent here, on these grounds, with Leo Tolstoy. I also knew that I would be his harshest critic and his best friend. And that heartache lay ahead of me, unspecified but cruel.
    I carried this secret, miraculous knowledge with me, hoarded it like an amulet. It would ruin everything if they found out before the time was ripe.
    Tanya, Lisa, and I lodged together in the vaulted room on the ground floor that nowadays is crammed with stinking, uncouth disciples: insane noblemen, beggars who are proud of their fallen state, toothless nuns, idealistic students, revolutionaries, criminals, vegetarians, foreigners. The mad economist Nikolayev is here, preaching Henry George’s theory of the single tax. He slurps his soup on the linen tablecloth, splashing those to his right and left. Drankov, the cinematographer, is here, too. I don’t mind him, although he is constantly taking our picture.
    I thought Lyovochka would propose to me after dinner, but he didn’t. By the time we left, two days later, nothing had happened. Worse, he acted as though we had never exchanged a moment of intimacy. I began to doubt my perspicacity. Perhaps I had been mistaken all along? Perhaps he had behaved the same with Lisa? Even with Tanya? As we departed, I could barely fend off despair, though I maintained a cheerful countenance. I comforted myself with the fact that Lisa was more miserable than I. She wept openly as we clattered off behind a troika, and Mama scolded her. ‘He will ask you in his own good time,’ she said, disappointment curdling her voice.
    Two days later, at Grandfather’s house, Tanya wakened me. ‘It’s the count!’
    ‘You’re teasing me.’
    ‘No, it’s true! He’s come on a white horse.’
    Leave it to my Lyovochka. Grandstanding, as usual. ‘A horse,’ he once said, ‘is the symbol of the rider’s soul.’
    Grandfather welcomed him eagerly, grinning and bowing. He was so queer, with his close-shaven skull and black skullcap, a razorlike nose. His hairy fingers, like the legs of a tarantula, seemed always to be moving. His eyes were independent of each other, like fish eyes, poking out from opposite sides of his narrow head.
    Lyovochka was covered with white dust and sweat. He affected a shy, boyish grin, apologizing for his condition.
    Grandfather told him not to think twice about it. It was an honor, he said. ‘And how long did it take you, Leo Nikolayevich? It’s such a long way to come on horseback.’
    ‘Three hours. Perhaps a bit more. I was in no hurry. It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?’
    ‘Let me get you a drink?’
    ‘That would be very kind of you, sir.’
    We huddled in the shade of the hall, listening to their exchange. I wore a muslin