While reading, I found myself reflecting on the year I lived in Moscow. I was somehow back in that atmosphere - back in the Tolstoy houses which I had visited.
It was 1993, and my husband, a cultural attache at the American Embassy, had been there for almost a year when I joined him, with three children in tow - including a six week old baby. I struggled upon arrival - wondering how I'd make a life for myself beyond the American Embassy compound where we lived and the various embassy receptions.
The city beyond the compound seemed forbidding and another world entirely. I needed to become confident enough to take myself into it and explore. So I took more Russian lessons, got involved in charity work at a Russian Orphanage and also in a church and I made frequent tours with my baby in a Snugli, around the various historical sites.
Top on my list were several residences of Russian writers - Chekhov, Tolstoy, Pushkin. I remember Tolstoy's house in Moscow very well. I also went to his estate Yasnaya Polyana, which was four hours drive from Moscow.
The Tolstoy home in Moscow was large and wooden with a huge garden behind it. It was winter when I visited, again with my baby in a Snugli, meeting my tour guide at the gate and looking out onto the garden behind the house where the Tolstoy skating rink had once been, and also onto the trees where Tolstoy used to chop wood.
We entered the house through the breakfast room with its old cuckoo clock, its table and chairs and mahogany chest crammed with blue and white Ghell china. It felt as though we were trespassing in a family home, because historical houses and museums in Moscow in 1993 didn't conform to western notions - which is to say there were no roped off areas; there was little in the home that I could not touch; nor were there any other visitors that day.
I remember standing in the bedroom where Tolstoy's favorite son had died at the age of seven - the religious icons hanging in the corners. After that loss the Tostoys were never the same, I was told. A two day illness and then their perfect child was gone.
I was told a story about how Tolstoy got his character Anna Karenina. It was when he saw Pushkin's daughter and she had a dark hair curling at the nape of her neck. He saw that curl and said to himself, that will be my character,
Tolstoy's study was in the back of the house. I also saw the boots he had made when he decided he wanted to be a shoemaker. I saw his bicycle and his woolen socks.
There was an enormous taxidermy bear on the landing of the important front staircase (or was it a wooden bear - I can't remember - anyway - a bear!) , and upstairs a lavishly decorated living room - crammed with Victorian brick a brack - plush upholstered chairs and divans, heavy brocade curtains. Two bored looking women in grey tunics sat on wooden chairs against the wall. That was their job. But they brightened like school girls when they saw they had visitors and then one of them went to the mantle piece and turned on a tape recorder.
Tolstoy's voice filled the room - deep, clear and old fashioned. He was talking to children and warning them to do their studies and not to waste time in idleness.
Several months later, I went on a day trip, traveling out beyond Tula to the Tolstoy estate Yasnaya Polyana. I brought along my eight year old daughter and now one year old son - out of necessity more than anything else - for it was a four hour bus ride to get there and I didn't have anyone to watch them. I remember we broke the journey in Tula for some rock hard cake that was evidently the specialty, a confection not to be missed!
Then at last we went on to the estate. It was only on the last leg of the journey that the tour guide informed us that the house itself was closed. We would only be permitted to walk around the grounds that afternoon.
At first I was infuriated, although most of the other tourists seemed to take this news in stride. This was Moscow after all. But, it had been a long journey with a little girl and infant son on my lap. Once we were out of the bus, however, we couldn't help our amazement as we walked up the sweeping drive lined with silver birch trees and lakes.
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| Yasnaya Polyana with my children |
We saw various farm laborers working the land - and I realized they were descended from the very workers who had cultivated Tolstoy's property. These were descendants of the ones he had so admired for their closeness to the land and nature.
We wandered round the grounds for a couple of hours, and even went onto the veranda of the house. At Chekhov's Moscow residence, I had seen photographs of Tolstoy and Chekhov on this very veranda having tea. In the photograph, Chekhov was laughing at some private story he was being told by Tolstoy. And here I was, with my children on the same veranda and nobody else was around. We were free to wander as we wished.
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| my children going up to Tolstoy's veranda |
One of my favorite books about Tolstoy is William L Shirer's Love and Hatred: The Troubled Marriage of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy. It was his last book and he wrote it well into his eighties. It details the excruciating jealousy that plagued the Tolstoy marriage. Sonya transcribed all of Tolstoy's work for him, but their marriage was tempestuous to say the least. It had been damaged beyond repair at the outset, when on their wedding night Lev insisted she read his private diaries which detailed his sexual transgressions and pecadillos. The poor girl, who was only nineteen at the time, never quite recovered.
That book also tells the story of Tolstoy's final days- and Sonya's jealous rage, how he tried to escape her by running away to the train station, how she begged to see him and was not permitted - and how he died there. So much passion and intellectual richness. So much life lived and suffered in these incredible homes.
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