The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Final Year by Jay Parini

those with nothing else to do. But Sergey Ivanovich annoys him in the most irrational way!
    Thinking it over, I believe it has something to do with Tanayev’s womanliness. Sergey Ivanovich is not the brute, masculine type that Lyovochka, in spite of himself, admires. He would never be caught dead riding in the woods on horseback or, in his youth, shooting animals. He likes to take bubble baths, to perfume himself, to wear bright colors – the sort of behavior that irritates Lyovochka beyond description.
    Ah, the letters that passed between us. Lyovochka hated my trips to Moscow and was sure that I went to our house on Dolgo-Khamovnicheski Street for the sole purpose of meeting Tanayev. For once, he was right. I was meeting him, and I loved those meetings! But nothing shameful passed between us. It was innocent, pure and simple!
    One doesn’t have to become a man’s lover to love him. I know that. But Sergey Ivanovich is simply not the sort of man who takes lovers anyway, not in the usual sense. He does not require the baser satisfactions – something the old goat could never comprehend.
    Once, only once, he kissed me.
    But that is history. We do not see each other now. We do not communicate. Lyovochka put an end to it, with a letter sent from his brother’s farm in Pirogovo: ‘It disgusts me to see you once again taking up with Tanayev in this manner. Frankly, I cannot continue to live with you under these circumstances…. If you cannot put an end to this, let us part company.’
    Let us part company! After a rueful laugh, I wept. But the letter continued, sketching out four ‘solutions’ to our ‘problem’:
The best thing is for you to break off all relations with Tanayev at once, never minding what be might think. This will release us instantaneously from the nightmare that has been tormenting us both for over a year. No meetings, no correspondence, no exchange of portraits, no little musbroom gatberings in the woods .
I could go abroad, having separated from you entirely. Each of us could then lead his or her own life .
We could both go abroad, thus facilitating your break with Tanayev. We would remain abroad for as long as it took for you to break this infatuation .
The most terrible solution is the fourth, and it causes me to shudder. We could attempt to convince ourselves that the problem will right itself and do nothing .
    Why did he torment himself with such hairsplitting madness? I did not know what to answer him, finding the entire subject baseless and foolish.
    For much of autumn I had been living in Moscow, studying the piano with Tanayev, attending concerts almost every night at the Conservatory. Toward winter, Lyovochka appeared on Dolgo-Khamovnicheski Street, his eyes red like open wounds, his hair and white beard flying apart. It struck me forcibly that he was deranged.
    He said not a thing about Tanayev all day, but I knew exactly what lay behind his stalking about the house like a wild boar. Lyovochka is nothing if not obvious. As we lay in bed that night, surrounded by what he so charmingly refers to as our ‘disgraceful luxury,’ I spoke openly about the problem. I had considered it carefully, deciding it was not worth continuing my relations with Tanayev as presently constituted.
    ‘Lyovochka,’ I said, sitting up in bed. ‘I will end my lessons with Sergey Ivanovich. No more lessons. No more long stays in Moscow on my own, either, if that upsets you so much. But I do ask one favor: that he may visit me once a month – or every other month, perhaps. I want him to feel free to come, occasionally, to sit beside me at the piano for an afternoon, much as any friend would do.’
    Lyovochka lifted himself to a sitting position, staring ahead like an embalmed corpse. He was shuddering, as if chilled to the marrow. I grew afraid.
    ‘Is that too much to ask?’ I said. ‘A simple friendship with Sergey Ivanovich?’
    ‘What you just said proves that your relationship with Tanayev has already