One hundred and thirty miles—a surface of packed, crustcd snow going across barren plains and through frail birch groves. At even' relay they drank scalding tea at the inn, hung thick with the smell of smoke, leather and cabbage. Grandmother's coach was in the lead, hoisted up on its high wheels, as comfortable as a house. There was food inside to last for ten days, a medicine kit, dressing case, and a night commode, so that the passengers might relieve themselves without getting out of the coach. Frozen by the wind, footmen clung to jutting platforms on either side of the box. The carriage was so monumentally big that it could not get through the archway of the post- house at Serpukhov, but apart from that, the trip went off without incident. They slept in the upstairs rooms of the inns, which were cold and full of bedbugs. The next morning—for the last lap of the journey—Papa invited each of his sons in turn to sit with him in his sledge. It was at his father's side that Leo entered Moscow at last, after a four-day voyage.
Golden cupolas blazed in the sun. The low hum of a hive rose up from the city. Bells rang out from time to time. 'ITie caravan entered the suburbs, where the snow was no longer so white. Suddenly, the twisting, narrow streets, little wooden houses, broken palisades and thronged open-air markets gave way to broad avenues, stone mansions and haughty churches with pink, blue, green or buttercup-yellow facades. The village became a city. Papa called out the names of the monuments as proudly as though he owned them. A many-colorcd crowd hurried along the sidewalks: merchants in cloaks, peasants in bark shoes, uniformed officers, gentlemen dressed in "European style," shopgirls in kerchiefs and ladies in hats ... No one paid any attention to the travelers. This fact plunged Leo into bewilderment. At Yasnaya Polyana the Tolstoys were the center of the earth. Why, in Moscow, did no one seem to notice them at all? Why did nobody take off his hat when they went by? "For the first time," he wrote in Boyhood, "it became clear to me that we (our family, that is) were not the only people on earth, that all the world's interests did not converge upon us and that there was another life, that of people who had nothing in common with us, cared nothing about us and did not even know we existed." Instead of turning away from these strangers, he became fascinated by their mystery. "How do they live, what do they live on?" he wondered. "IIow do they bring up their children? How do they punish them?"
The caravan entered the Prcchistcnskaya district, silent and stately, close to the center of town, went down Plyuchika Street, parallel to the river, turned into a courtyard and stopped, in front of a handsome house two and a half stories high, with a long empire facade pierced by eleven windows.
Having spent all his life in the country, Leo could not get used to having neighbors ten feet away. One couldn't feel at home any more, in this overcrowded city that pressed in on one from all sides. 'Ilie house was cold and impersonal, inhospitable. Papa often dined out and traveled a great deal. Leo's older brothers were preparing for their university entrance examinations. Leo went for walks with Fyodor Ivanovich Rosscl, abscntmindcdly learned his lessons, and dreamed of possessing one day an imagination equal to that of the blind storyteller whom Grandmother unfortunately had had to leave behind when they camc to Moscow. Very soon he convinced himself that he too had wonderful stories to tell. He had only to pick up a pen. After stitching together a notebook, he covered it with blue paper and wrote the title in fat letters on the first page: "Grandfather's Tales." At the bottom of the page, the publisher's name: "The Children's Library." 1"hen, in a laborious hand, he began:
"In the town of P . . . there lived an old man ninety years of age who had served under five emperors, who had seen more than one hundred battles, who held the rank of coloncl, who had ten decorations paid for in blood for he had ten wounds and walked on crutches having only one leg, and had three scars on his forehead while one of his fingers, the middle one, had fallen at Braila. He had five children: two little lasses and three young fellows, lie called them, although the eldest already had four children and four grandchildren. . . ."
The story went on in this vein for eighteen pages and stopped abruptly when its author wearied of his numerous heroes.
Then, too, the family atmosphere in mid-1837 may not have been conducive to creativity. For some time now, Nicholas Ilich Tolstoy had been worried about his health. He drank a good deal, coughed, spat blood. Shortly after signing the fictitious sale contract for his neighbor Temyashev's estate at Pirogovo, he learned of the latter's death. As he expected they would, the dead man's sisters immediately attacked the contract that reduced their share of the inheritance in favor of the two orphan girls. Exasperated by their pettifogging maneuvers, Nicholas Ilich Tolstoy assembled his papers, took two servants, and set out for Tula to contend with his adversaries. He covered the distance—one hundred and five miles—in twenty-four hours, which was a feat at the time. At nine in the evening of the following day, June 21, he fell down dead in the middle of the street, of an attack of apoplexy.*
The news filled little Leo with grief and fright. At church, however, during the first requiem mass, a sense of importance began to mingle
• As neither money nor papers were found on him, his servants were suspccted of killing him; after an inquest, however, the final verdict was death through natural causcs.
with his sorrow; he thought that he cut an interesting figure in his mourning clothes, that everybody felt sorry for him because he was an orphan, and that he had a part to play in the world. Besides, since he had not been present when his father died, he still half-expected to see him again. lie constantly thought he recognized him on the street among the passers-by. Every time he saw a stocky man whose face was a little flushed, his heart thudded with love.f "I loved my father very much," Leo Tolstoy wrote in his Reminiscences, "but I did not leam how strong that love was until he died."
Aunt Toinette's despair is shown by a note in her hand: "June 21, 1837. A terrible day for me ... I have lost what was most dear to me in all the world, the only being who loved me, who always treated me with the most affectionate and sincere consideration and who has taken all my happiness away with him. The only tiling that binds me to life is that now I shall live for his children."1
Nicholas Ilich's mother bore her bereavement with less fortitude. She wept from morning to evening and, when night came, ordered the door of her son's room opened, smiled at his ghost and held conversations with him: "Come, little one, come closer, my sweet! I am so glad you have come! They told me you were no more! How absurd! As if you could die before me!"2 Or she would suddenly cry out against God for dealing so harshly with her, when she had done nothing wTong. The frightened children listened from afar to her outbursts and her sobbing and hysterical laughter. They were forbidden to go near her when she was having one of her fits.
Pclagya Nikolaycvna was a long time recovering her self-possession. The guardianship of the children was entrusted to his older sister, the pious Aunt Aline. She solemnly agreed to undertake this task, but her first allegiance was to the Lord: she had no practical sense, and allowed the family affairs to go to rack and ruin because she could not bring herself to believe in human wickcdness. In this unorganized household, where three women in black were vainly trying to keep life going, the children smcllcd medicine wherever they went, and longed for their happy years at Yasnaya Polyana. To keep up the pretense for them, or to deceive herself, the matriarch insisted upon continuing the old formal dinner tradition. As before, the children waited in silence for the moment to go in to table. A door suddenly opened, the swish of a gown was heard, and Grandmother appeared, regal and stem, her skull hidden by a lace cap with lavender ribbons. The moment she let herself sink into her armchair, the rest of the family clattered into theirs. Hie