Tolstoy had returned to his lodgings in the Kalininsky district after attending the funeral of one of his old friends. These were sparse lodgings with the simplest of furnishings, the bed and a desk with a chair being the only things he deemed necessary for the owner to provide. He sat on his wooden desk that had a little candle, some notes for a literary work, put his head in his hand and stared at the wall.
'That was more like a dance than a funeral with all the laughter and merriment; add confetti it would have been just right for a birthday party. Since when have they started drinking champagne at services for the dead?'
He fell to brooding and was in a miserable mood. Not because he was thinking of his late friend, but because of what he saw as the lowering of society within Russia and particularly in St Petersburg.
'Everyone is either obsessed with promotions or who may marry who. At what point do such thoughts become sinful?'
This was his second day in St Petersburg having traveled from Yasnaya Polyana and it would be his last night in a city which nearly wholly horrified him; but he knew it would be like this. He had planned his stay to be as limited as possible. Miserable may not be the best description for his mood. Leo was angry.
'Champagne at a funeral?' he kept asking himself.
He looked down at the thick notepad that had his writings and thumbed through it until he reached a story he had written before he had come to the city. He went through the psychological piece that described a man's lament at how his family life wasn't as he intended it to be, a man wrestling with his conscience as he lay dying. His wife would go through it as soon as he reached back home, proofreading it and typing it up for publication. He winced slightly as he remembered the rows as she typed up the Kreutzer Sonata, the unpleasantness. Every relationship he had was starting to become unpleasant. Everything was becoming foul to him. Everything came to infuriate him.
'How can a moral man not be angry at - '
Someone knocked on his door. It was a familiar knock but it raised his eyebrow. He knew it was his daughter but the knock said she was excited rather than her usual conserved, timid self. His daughter, Maria, entered the room back from visiting a great aunt. She caught him as he wrote down the word 'resurrection' on an empty page.
'Sorry. Were you writing, father?' she said as she stopped at the threshold.
'No. It's fine. I was just scribbling something,' he replied and eyed her fancier than usual dress. She was a simple and plain girl who never generally wore frills or make up, but had both. 'God, how I loathe this city. Everything is so unnatural here. They even served champagne at the funeral service.'
'Champagne was flowing at the countess's house too. I had to say no a thousand times.'
Tolstoy looked sternly at her flushed face and recalled the quickened knocks and knew that it was a lie. She had said yes. Maria went to sit on the bed.
'There were so many people in the room, different types, dignitaries. They were all asking about you and offered their condolences. I told the countess that you'd come by tomorrow. But I think she knows -'
'I could hardly stand a funeral where everyone, even the older men, had sharp moustaches. How could I survive a socialite event? They've become more depraved than I even thought possible. And you ? You enjoyed yourself there?'
'There were some interesting people there.'
'Shameless you mean. This whole country - worse than nights in Egypt. One of them even nudged and winked at me next to the coffin asking me if I would write something about this death. This death, he said! Of his brother! In front of the coffin!'
'Father, you've gotten more angry as of late,' Maria said airily.
'And you?'
She stopped pulling off her glove which was not her habit to wear and a little chastened said that she was still the same person. Maria had always been an unattractive person which Leo had rejoiced over as this would mean her being less in the social circles he disapproved of. But the bigger his fame grew the greater the pull. Her looks would be disregarded as his income and notoriety would transform her. He was beginning to think his literary talents were a curse even if he simply wanted to use it to moralize. What should he do? People were glossing over the content because of the style.
'Everything is sucked into the mire of society,' he thought to himself. 'Even morals themselves.'
'Sukhotin was there too. He asked about Tatiana.'
He was momentarily stunned and then said in exasperation:
'Since when have you started entertaining these things?'
Maria was acting most unusually. In fact, the best way to describe her at this moment was that she was 'feeling herself.' Literally, even, as she was caressing her exposed arm. Prior, this would be seen as neurosis but now, her father saw something sensual about it.
'Father you've become less like Levin and more like Prince Bolkonsky.'
It took him a moment to figure out who Prince Bolkonsky was.
'He had it right if he was like me.'
'All he saw were the faults of his daughter and all you see are the faults of - everything.'
'What good is there to see about something drenched in the foulness of a swamp. The stench and muck.'
'There has to be something good about it if everyone accepts it. Why is it that when you see a lawyer you say there's something wrong with his judgment since he submits to a manmade system. Why is it when you see a professor you say there's something wrong with his instruction or material if his students act as society expects them to. Why when you see a priest you say there's something wrong with his devotion because he laughs sometimes? Why are you so angry? This Scandinavian said that anger is the destroyer of creativity.'
Tolstoy regarded his daughter who had never spoken to him in such a critical way before.
'Let's see where that happiness gets him. I was never happy when I wrote anything.'
'You were angry when you wrote Anna Karenina?
'Livid.'
'You were angry when you wrote War and Peace?'
'Furious.'
'And these newer ones, The Death of Ivan Iliych and Hadji Murat, were you angry when you wrote them?'
'Incandescent.'
'I feel like you see wrong because you want to be some kind of prophet. Like you have a desire to change things just to say you brought change, real change, beyond the realm of literature.'
She had a dagger at his throat, making him speechless for the truth silences. He was angry at lawyers, priests, academics and society itself only because he was nothing transformative, but simply an aristocratic hobby, indulged and disregarded; and he was angry because of that, because they would not live as he wanted, relegating him to a social critic raging at the winds of a hurricane; and rage he would, an old man angry at being nothing more than a pleasant way to while away a couple hours, who would never be heard with anything but with a condescending smile just to humour him.
