The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year

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The year has turned again, bringing us to the end of the first decade of the new century. I write the strange numbers in my diary. 1910. Is it possible?

Lyovochka is asleep now, and he will not waken till dawn. A while ago, I was drawn by his rattling snore down the hall to his bedroom. His snore sounds through the house like a creaking door, and the servants giggle about it. ‘The old man is sawing wood,’ they say, right in front of me. They no longer respect me, but I smile back at them.

Lyovochka’s snoring doesn’t bother me, since we sleep in separate rooms now. When we slept in the same bed, he had teeth: they lessened the snore.

I sat on his narrow little bed and pulled the gray blanket with the key design up to his chin. He started, forcing a monstrous grimace. But he didn’t waken. Almost nothing wakes Leo Tolstoy. Whatever he does, he does completely: sleep, work, dance, ride, eat. They write about him constantly in the press. Even in Paris, the morning papers adore tidbits of gossip about him, about us – true or untrue, they don’t care. ‘What does Count Tolstoy like for breakfast, Countess?’ they ask, lining up on the front porch for interviews throughout the summer months, when the weather in Tula makes this a pleasant destination. ‘Does he cut his own hair? What is he reading now? Have you bought him a present for his name day?’

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