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

her body signaled to the world. I hated her then. Who could tolerate the fetching way she would dance and sing, her grandiose schemes for ‘making it’ in the theater? As if Papa would let one of his daughters spread her tail feathers on the Moscow stage! Poor Papa.
    I don’t think I was as difficult as the others. Nor should it have surprised anyone that Count Tolstoy chose me over my sisters. Though not brazen about it, I had accomplishments. I could play the piano – not like I do today, though not so badly either. My watercolors were passable. I could dance as well as most girls of my rank and position. And I could write like the wind – stories and poems, diaries, letters. Then, as now, Lyovochka had an instinct for self-preservation. He has always known how to get what he needs.
    I first met the count when I was ten. He had come to visit Papa in the Kremlin, where we had an apartment, his dark mustache drooping, his uniform perfectly pressed, the boots so shiny you could see his knees reflecting on his toes. A ceremonial sword hung from his belt. He was about to join his regiment in the Danube, he said, affecting a quiet, slightly melancholic swagger. I stood meekly in one corner while he and Papa talked.
    They sat in the front parlor, directly across from each other. Papa couldn’t see me, but I could see the count, his knees pressed together, his hands large and red, folded awkwardly on his lap like sea crabs. As Papa spoke, the count’s eyes seemed to flash with attentiveness. His stare, then as now, was compelling, irresistible. He hunched forward on the low cerise chair. The yellow epaulets and the double row of brass buttons on his uniform were almost too much for me to bear!
    He and Papa talked for two hours in muffled tones, as if plotting the overthrow of the monarchy. What was all the hush about? Were they deciding which of us girls would be the future Countess Tolstoy? I don’t think I could have wondered such a thing. After all, I was only ten years old. But my heart went out to Leo Tolstoy. I decided then and there that, one day, I would be his wife. When he left, I stole back into the parlor and tied a pink ribbon around the back leg of the chair he’d sat on.
    After that, Papa spoke often of the young count, for whom he had a special affection. Once he let me borrow his novel Childhood . I read it in one long night, by candlelight, while my sisters slept. Every sentence blazed like a match tip. The images whirled in my head for weeks. No wonder all of Moscow was agog.
    But that was years before any of us was really old enough for marriage. Suddenly, we were ready. Lisa was, anyway. And Mama was fed up. This courting business – the gentlemen callers, the endless teas and tension – had gone far enough. She wanted Lisa off her hands as quickly as possible.
    In July a brainstorm overtook her; she would visit her father at Ivitsi, in the province of Tula, not far from the Tolstoy family estate at Yasnaya Polyana. It just so happened that we three girls (and little Volodya, of course) trotted along as well.
    Mama said Lisa was the ideal mate for this eccentric, overly intellectual count, and she always made sure that Lisa sat next to him on the sofa in Moscow. Lisa would natter on about the latest philosophical works hot off the German presses. ‘It often occurs to me,’ intoned our Lisa, her small voice trilling like a bird’s, ‘that the German Higher Criticism has made ill use of Hegel’s dialectic. Don’t you think so, Count?’ Lyovochka’s face would glaze over.
    What was actually on the count’s young mind was hunting in the Caucasus, though he would occasionally dazzle (and alarm) us with a speech about the wonders of Immanuel Kant. Sometimes, catching my eye, he would wink, and once, in the hallway, he squeezed my hand when nobody was looking.
    Much as self-advertisement disgusts me, I will admit I was lovely in those days, with a tiny waist a man could happily surround with his