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

immensely.’
    ‘Good. He will like that. No amount of admiration surfeits him.’
    Bulgakov was uncomfortable, so I changed my tack. ‘He is deeply grateful for the help you’ve been giving him. You’ve come up with a great many useful passages. He told me so himself. I think it surprises him that such a young man could be learned. When he was your age, he was whoring in the Caucasus.’
    The dear boy cleverly ignored my derisory remarks about Lyovochka – a good sign. Tact is among the more socially useful forms of insincerity. It is noticeably lacking among my husband’s associates. Lyovochka, of course, has never had to worry about not offending people. If you are Leo Tolstoy, you merely reveal the Truth.
    ‘ For Every Day is a noble project,’ he said. ‘It will help people to live more contemplative lives.’
    ‘Contemplative lives!’ I said. ‘You say lovely things, Valentin Fedorovich. A gift for the apt phrase!’
    He was staring past me, out the window, where the snow was falling.
    ‘The winter has been good to us,’ I said. ‘Even with the snow. Not more than we can bear. I used to dread winters in the country. But Leo Nikolayevich adores it here. I can hardly ever get him to go to Moscow, except for the briefest visits. The crowds upset him. They mob him now – like an emperor. It’s hardly safe for him to travel.’
    ‘I heard about what happened at the Kursk Station.’
    ‘There were thousands of them, screaming and cheering, pushing around us! Thousands! The tsar himself does not attract such attention.’
    He liked to hear me praise Lyovochka, especially his books. Unlike Gusev, who was a crass illiterate, Bulgakov has read everything by my husband. War and Peace he called ‘a monument’ and asked about its origins. So I told him about the five years it took to complete – back in the mid-sixties. Can it be so long ago? We saw almost no one during that time. Lyovochka wrote furiously, with no regard for the things of this world, no fretting over disciples, no Chertkov or Sergeyenko hovering beside him and tearing every sheet off the desk before the ink was even dry! I, his young wife, worked beside him through every stage.
    ‘I hunched over his manuscripts with a magnifying glass, trying to make out the infinite corrections, till my head almost burst with pain,’ I told him. ‘But it was bearable pain. I would awaken each day dreaming of Pierre and Natasha, of Prince Andrey and his father, even old Kutuzov!’
    Bulgakov listened keenly. He is in love with Lyovochka. I could see that in his eyes.
    ‘My life is difficult now,’ I said. ‘You know that Leo Nikolayevich and I have had disagreements.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘What is obvious cannot be ignored.’
    ‘I’m aware that there is a good deal of trouble between you.’
    ‘He thinks of me as his enemy, not his friend. But Leo Nikolayevich, my Lyovochka, is old and sick. We nearly lost him a few months ago, you know. He went unconscious for a day. His pulse nearly stopped.’
    Bulgakov nodded. Furrows of sympathy deepened in his brow. His gaze was innocent as a pond.
    ‘You must help me, Valentin Fedorovich. I want only what is best for Leo Nikolayevich and his family. They want to separate us. You have seen as much, I’m sure. I could tolerate the situation if it only concerned me – I would dislike it, but I could stand it. What is unreasonable is for me to sit back while they steal his children’s inheritance.’
    ‘They would never do such a thing.’
    I tried not to laugh. ‘They will do whatever is necessary to accomplish their ends.’
    My young visitor grew ill at ease. I decided not to ask for his help. Not yet. I had first to be sure of his friendship, though I could see that a bond existed between us.
    ‘I will give you a present,’ I said, pulling from my dresser a small notebook I had bought in Moscow several months before. It had a neatly embossed cover, and the paper was handmade in Amalfi.
    ‘You’re