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

powerful hands! That hot July morning, when the maid came to say the coach was ready to take us to Count Tolstoy’s estate, I knew that he would soon be my husband.
    Papa waved his handkerchief from the steps of Grandfather’s small manor house as the ancient coach creaked and wobbled down the dirt road. Miles down the road we came to the soft, undulating cornfields typical of the Tula region. The corn, wheat, and rye, the long, symmetrical bands of muzhiks bending over their work in happy unison rolled past, then the forest of Zasyeka, with its thick, green woodland smelling of pine and mud. We came upon the village of Yasnaya Polyana, which did not impress me. A miserable clutch of thatched huts, shaky isbas, and stone barns. The village pump, with a tin pail slung beneath the spout, was spurting muddy water. The big wooden door of the church swung wide, and a middle-aged widow in a black veil stood beside it, chattering away to a toothless old nun the size and shape of a tree stump. The widow bowed gravely at our coach as we passed, feigning deference – the typical hypocrisy of the Russian lower classes.
    Leo Tolstoy lived in his large ancestral home, which bore the same name as the village, Mama told us. Like all good teachers, she had a way of seeming enthusiastic about the obvious. She went on to explain how the count, like most young men of his rank, had been addicted to gambling. (‘Your father, of course, was the exception,’ she said.) Playing cards with an unscrupulous neighbor, he had bet the central part of his house to stay in a game. He lost, and the unforgiving neighbor actually hauled off the main body of Yasnaya Polyana, leaving the wings behind, freestanding and ridiculous.
    ‘He no longer gambles, I believe,’ Lisa said. ‘Nor does he drink overmuch. He is practically a teetotaler. And he is very devout.’ She sucked her lips into a pert rosebud that made me want to slap her. But I restrained myself, knowing what I knew about the count’s real intentions.
    ‘I’ll bet he’s worse than ever,’ Tanya said. ‘All young men drink and gamble, and Lord knows what they do with women.’
    ‘That tongue of yours is going to wag you all the way to a nunnery,’ Mama said, fussing with her hair.
    We passed between two whitewashed towers at the entrance to the grounds of Yasnaya Polyana. The big stone house that had been refashioned from the abandoned wings stood at the end of the long serpentine drive, with parallel rows of silver birches rising along it like an honor guard. The meadows beyond them looked rich and silky, spotted with buttercups. And butterflies, too! The house competed admirably with nature for our attention. It was a long house on two floors, white as alabaster, with a Greek pediment topping a veranda over the entrance. A beautiful house, I whispered to myself. I was determined to be its mistress.
    Lyovochka’s Aunt Toinette, a shriveled thing in a country dress, welcomed us. ‘ Bienvenu! Comme c’est bon! ’ she kept chirping. It seemed incongruous, this distinctly peasantlike woman – a real krestyonka – speaking Parisian French with almost no accent.
    Mama accepted her welcome in garbled French, which, to my ear, sounded more like Chinese. ‘ Merci beaucoup! C’est une belle maison! Une belle maison! Mais oui! ’ she cried.
    Lyovochka, looking red-faced and out of breath, came hurling through the door apologetic, saying that he hadn’t quite expected us. But he didn’t make us feel guilty. Like a French courtier, he kissed everyone’s hand in turn, lingering that extra moment over mine. I lit up inside, ablaze with love. I did not know where to look or what to say.
    ‘Let me show you the orchard,’ he said. It seemed odd, especially to Mama, that he wanted us to see the orchard before we toured the house itself, but Mama was not going to object.
    ‘We just adore orchards,’ she said. ‘Don’t we adore orchards, girls?’
    ‘I haven’t thought much about it,’