The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy by Cathy Porter Read Free Book Online Page B

days I think I shall kill myself with jealousy. “In love as never before!” he writes. With that fat, pale peasant woman—how frightful!* I looked at the dagger and the guns with such joy. One blow, I thought, how easy it would be—if only it weren’t for the baby. Yet to think she is there, just a few steps away. I feel demented. I shall go for a drive. I may even see her. So he really did love her! I should like to burn his diary and the whole of his past.
    I have returned and am feeling worse; my head aches, I am distraught, my heart is heavy. I felt free outside in the open air—if only I could always breathe as freely as that. But life is so petty. Love is hard—when you love it takes your breath away, you lay down your life and soul for it and it’s with you as long as you live. It would be narrow and mean, this little world of mine, if it weren’t for him. Yet it’s impossible for us to join together our two worlds. He is so intelligent, he has such energy, and then there is that dreadful, endless past of his. And mine is so small and insignificant. I felt terrified today by the thought of our journey to Moscow, for I shall become even more insignificant there. I have been reading the openings of some of his works, and the very mention of love or women makes me feel so disgusted and depressed I would gladly burn everything.
    If I could kill him and create a new person exactly the same as he is now, I would do so happily.

1863
    28th June—birth of the couple’s son, Sergei. Shortly afterwards Tolstoy talks of going to war (possibly to put down the Polish uprising against Russian domination). But instead he starts on War and Peace. Summer—Sofia’s seventeen-year-old sister Tanya Behrs visits Yasnaya Polyana and embarks on a romance with Tolstoy’s brother Sergei, twenty years her senior .
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    9th January . Never in my life have I felt so wretched with remorse.* Never did I imagine I could be so much to blame. I have been choked with tears all day, and am afraid to talk to him or look at him. I love him deeply, he has never been so precious to me, and I feel so worthless and loathsome. Yet he is not even angry and still loves me, and his face is so gentle and saintly. A man like this could make one die of humility. Mental pain has made me physically ill. I thought I would miscarry, I was in such pain. I have been praying all day, trying to lighten my crime and undo what I have done. I feel a little easier when he isn’t here, for then I can cry and love him. When he is here my conscience tortures me; it’s agony to see his sweet face, which I have avoided looking at since yesterday evening. How could I have treated him so badly? I have racked my brains for some way of making amends for that stupid word—or not so much make amends as make myself a better person for him. I cannot love him any more than I already do. I already love him to such excess, with all my heart and soul, that there is nothing in my mind but my love for him, nothing. There is absolutely no evil in him, nothing I could ever dream of reproaching him for.
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    11th January . I am calmer now because he is being a little kinder to me. But my unhappiness is still so fresh that every memory of it brings on a terrible physical pain in my head and body—I feel it passing through my veins and nerves.
    He saw this diary but hasn’t referred to it, I don’t know if he has read it. It was vile and I have no desire to reread it.
    I am alone and afraid, which is why I wanted to write sincerely and at length, but fear has confused my thoughts. I am afraid of beingfrightened now that I’m pregnant. My jealousy is a congenital illness, or maybe in loving him I have nothing else to love; I’ve given myself so completely to him that my only happiness is with him and I am afraid of losing him, as old men fear to lose an only child on whom their whole life depends. People