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

dress that day, a white one for summer, with a lilac-tinted rosette on the right shoulder. I trailed a long ribbon down one arm, the kind we used to call Suivez-moi, jeune bomme .
    ‘He has come for you, Lisa,’ my mother said. She could barely restrain her giddiness and pride. ‘Today is your day.’
    ‘I wouldn’t sleep with a dusty man like that,’ said Tanya to Lisa.
    Lisa turned her nose up. To give in to her sister’s taunts would be unbecoming of a future countess.
    The day followed a summery course of gay (though hardly extraordinary) meals, with lots of party games and silly jokes. The strain of waiting for the count to strike seemed unbearable to poor Grandfather. Mama was hardly any better. Her conversation lapsed into inanities that, fortunately, the count never noticed.
    It happened after dinner. Everyone had left the dining room but myself and the rather obviously hyperventilating count. He turned to me and said, ‘Could you wait a moment, Sofya Andreyevna? It’s so pleasant in here.’
    ‘It’s a charming room, isn’t it?’ I said, lying through my teeth.
    ‘The food is excellent here.’
    ‘Grandfather likes his food.’
    We shifted from foot to foot. Get on with it, I thought.
    ‘Come sit beside me on the sofa,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t mind that, would you?’
    I smiled and followed him to the little sofa along the side wall. He sat down first, impolitely, but his doing so allowed me to choose my position. For the sake of modesty, I left a few inches between us.
    He pulled a green, baize-covered table up to our knees and took a piece of chalk from his coat pocket. I watched him closely as he leaned over the table and began to scribble on its soft cover.
    He wrote: ‘Y.y.a.y.d.f.h.r.m.c.o.m.a.a.t.i.o.h.f.m.’
    I stared at the peculiar inscription.
    ‘Can you decipher this?’
    ‘It’s a string of letters, Leo Nikolayevich.’
    Was this some sort of after-dinner game played by the aristocracy? My stomach tightened.
    ‘I can help you,’ he said. ‘The first two y’s represent the words Your youth .’
    ‘Your youth and your desire for happiness remind me cruelly of my age and the impossibility of happiness for me,’ I cried, having reconstructed the entire sentence. It was a miracle!
    When the meaning wakened in my head, I shuddered. Everything fell clear.
    Lyovochka, meanwhile, was rubbing out what he had written and starting the little game all over again.
    This time, he wrote: ‘Y.f.i.w.a.m.f.t.L.H.m.t.c.t.’
    I knew exactly what he meant once I understood that L was for Lisa. ‘Your family is wrong about my feelings toward Lisa. Help me to clarify this.’
    An actual proposal did not follow for several weeks, but I knew now that poor Lisa was finished. He loved me alone.
    When Lyovochka visited us in Moscow in September, I gave him a story I had written. It was about a tender young girl who had a suitor called Dublitsky – an old, rather ugly nobleman. He wished, more than anything in the world, to marry her, but she wasn’t sure if she really wanted him. I don’t know why I wrote such a story. I didn’t actually think of Lyovochka as old and ugly, though he was a little of both. I gave it to him without realizing it might cause pain. His response came, by post, a few days later:
    Naturally when I read your story, my dear one, I saw that I was Dublitsky. How could I think otherwise? I realized that I am what I am: Uncle Leo, an old, uncommonly plain – even ugly – character who should concern himself with God’s work and nothing more. I should do God’s work and do it well, and that should be enough for me. But I become miserable when I think of you, when I recall that I am Dublitsky. I am reminded of my age and the impossibility of happiness. For me, anyway. Yes, I am Dublitsky. But to marry simply because I need a wife is something beyond my ken. I can’t do it. I would ask of my future wife something terrible , impossible: I insist on being loved as I love.