Free The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year by Jay Parini Page B

the Queen of the Ball.
    ‘It is a great honor,’ Tanayev said, kissing my hand.
    ‘You played marvelously well tonight,’ I said. ‘Especially the Appassionata . It is my favorite sonata.’
    ‘I thank you, Countess. Beethoven is not for everyone.’
    I invited him to ride in my carriage, since his was nowhere to be seen, and he graciously accepted.
    It was on the way to his hotel that I mentioned, in passing, that I, too, played the piano.
    ‘By comparison with you, of course, I’m a dreadful amateur,’ I said.
    ‘You do yourself an injustice, I’m sure,’ he said.
    ‘I wish that were true.’
    ‘Perhaps I could give you some lessons. Would that interest you, Countess?’
    ‘Me? You would instruct me?’
    Imagine! He was an impossibly dear man, taking on such a beginner. That night, I lay awake in bed quivering. I would be taught by the man who had himself been discovered at the age of ten by Nikolai Rubinstein! The man who became Tchaikovsky’s protégé and friend! The teacher of Scriabin! My luck, it seemed, was turning.
    That was shortly after the death of my dear little Vanechka. He was my best, my sweetest and dearest little boy, so kind and loving. I cannot bear to say his name or think of him. On the night he died, I went to his bedside and felt his tiny, fevered head. ‘I’m sorry to have wakened you, Mama,’ he said. ‘Sweet child,’ I cried. ‘My sweetest child!’
    Lyovochka never understood my grief. Nor did he see that Tanayev offered a balm. Dear Sergey Ivanovich led me from darkness into light. But how bitter my husband grew, full of jealousy and hatred, small-minded, petty. His so-called disciples come here day after day now, worshiping him like Jesus Christ himself, and Lyovochka allows this to happen. He is so greedy for publicity, so thirsty for praise. If only they knew what I know …
    Sergey Ivanovich came to Yasnaya Polyana frequently, but always against my husband’s will. The great Russian author, heir to Pushkin, peer of Dickens and Hugo, would lock himself in his study, avoiding the dinner table, sulking like a child whose mother has refused to give him a sweet. Sergey Ivanovich, of course, behaved superbly.
    Our best times together were in Moscow. Sergey Ivanovich would play for hours at the grand piano in the front parlor. How he could play the polonaise! After, we would drink tea together, talk, or take little shopping tours of Hunters Row. Sergey Ivanovich loves his food, perhaps a little too passionately, but I was willing to cater to his whims. We would steal away to Trembles, the bakery, and buy dozens of tiny mince cakes, bonbons, and chocolate truffles. All the way home we’d stuff ourselves, giggling in the back of the sleigh, while old Emelyanych, our driver, scowled. What blissful days!
    I thought that finally happiness had found me. Then Lyovochka wrote me one of his famous, stupid letters:
    I find it infinitely sad and humiliating that a worthless and unappealing stranger should now be ruling our lives and poisoning our final years together; sad and humiliating to be forced to ask when he is leaving, where he’s going, when he will rehearse his stupid music, and what music he will play. It’s terrible, terrible, base and humili ating! And that it should happen at the end of our lives, which until now have been honest and clean – also at a time when we appear to have been drawing closer and closer, in spite of the many things that divide us …
     
    How he went on! My Lyovochka likes nothing better than to thrash himself, to don the hair shirt and mortify his flesh. But why does he always have to thrash me, too? The subject of Tanayev drove him crazy. Of course, it flattered me that he should, at his age, have become jealous of my attentions. Before Sergey Ivanovich came along, he paid no mind to who sat with me on the sofa or wrote me little notes or invited me to tea. I would never have expected this turn in Lyovochka, since jealousy is the province of