MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

The banquet that night lasted until ten or eleven. Entertainment was provided by students from the Lev Tolstoy Accordion Academy: boys aged six to fifteen, already able to play the accordion with all the mannerisms of genial, nostalgic old men. Even the tiniest of boys, playing on the tiniest accordion, smiled knowingly, nodded, and even winked at the audience.

We had to get up very early the next morning, for the last official event of the International Tolstoy Conference: a field trip to Chekhov’s house. It was more of a rest stop than a field trip; Chekhov’s former estate, Melikhovo, lay directly along the three-hour route from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow. Visiting Chekhov’s house made a certain amount of logistical sense; aesthetically, however, it felt strange. After six days of total devotion to Tolstoy, master of the Russian novel, it seemed odd to breezily drop in on Chekhov—master of the Russian short story, and a very different writer—simply because one happened to be passing through the neighborhood.

Chekhov was nine years old when War and Peace was published. He admired Tolstoy tremendously and longed to meet him; at the same time, the prospect of this meeting filled him with such alarm that he once ran out of a bathhouse in Moscow when he learned that Tolstoy was also there.

Chekhov did not want to meet Tolstoy in the bath; but this was apparently his inescapable destiny. When he finally worked up his nerve to go to Yasnaya Polyana, Chekhov arrived at the exact moment when Tolstoy was headed to the stream for his daily ablutions. Tolstoy insisted that Chekhov join him; Chekhov later recalled that, as he and Tolstoy sat naked in the chin-deep water, Tolstoy’s beard had floated majestically before him.

Despite his dislike of doctors, Tolstoy had been greatly impressed by Chekhov. “He is full of talent and has undoubtedly has a very good heart,” he said. “However, he does not seem to have any very definite attitude toward life.” Chekhov had only a poorly defined attitude towards life, this strange process which brought one eye-to-eye with the floating beard of the greatest crank in world literature.