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Lyovochka’s profile, too, with the fleshy nose and jutting chin. A loathsome parody of my husband, he lurches about Yasnaya Polyana, carrying wood, doing errands, creeping in the shadows.
    I have begged my husband to get rid of Timothy, to send him to Moscow, at least. We are never there anyway. But the Master wants his sins to cluster about him. He wants to suffer, to see that grotesque reflection of himself at every turn.
    I married Leo Tolstoy, the great author, on 23 September 1862, at eight o’clock, in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, right under the Kremlin’s long, imperial shadow.
    ‘How can I live without your company?’ my sister Tanya said, as I was leaving the church.
    ‘Try, my dear. Try.’
    I was pleased to slough off the old life. I was tired of being beholden to Papa, plagued by doubts about my future life. My life was settled, once and for all.
    Oh, was it settled.

Dr Makovitsky
     
    They laugh at me. They giggle and sneer behind my back. Even the servants have caught on to their little game. Just the other day I heard the maids saying, ‘The doctor is such a little runt – and a dunce.’ They get this kind of talk from Sofya Andreyevna, I suspect. She dislikes me. But what can one expect from a woman like her, who wastes her days snuffling around behind Leo Nikolayevich’s back like a dog, trying to unearth some new bone of discord. She suspects that Chertkov has convinced her husband to draft a new will that bequeaths his writing to the world after his death. He has always said he wants to do this, and it’s the obvious thing for him to do. But Sofya Andreyevna wants the royalties. How else could she support all the servants, the big house, the torrent of guests and outings and trips to Moscow, dresses from St Petersburg? Her avarice is as legendary as her inability to understand her husband’s principles. As Leo Nikolayevich often says to her, one should not expect to make a profit from books written for the sake of humanity. It offends him that anyone, let alone the poor, should have to pay to read what he has written.
    But I feel sorry for Sofya Andreyevna. It’s not that she is a bad woman. She simply does not understand what her husband has accomplished. Her soul is not copious enough to absorb his dreams for the improvement of humanity. On the other hand, they don’t require immense effort to comprehend. The poor shall inherit the earth. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. And so forth. Everything Leo Nikolayevich says has all been said before. In the realm of religion and ethics, one does not invent the truth; one discovers and proclaims it.
    Leo Nikolayevich is the great proclaimer.
    I am not, however, so foolish as to think that he is Christ. Christ is Christ. But Leo Nikolayevich is certainly one of his prophets. I am lucky to know him as well as I do. I am more than his personal physician. I am his friend.
    I began reading Tolstoy as a medical student in Prague. Strolling amid that city’s amber stones or sitting in the cathedral while the organist practiced for Sunday morning services, I would meditate on his message. Later, in Hungary, I dedicated myself to his writings. Soon I wrote to him asking for advice, informing him that I had been sought out by local Tolstoyans to lead their group.
    He wrote back: ‘It is a great and gross mistake to speak about Tolstoyism or to seek my guidance on this matter or to ask my decisions on problems. There is no Tolstoyism or any teaching of mine, and there never has been. There is only one general and universal teaching of the truth, which for me, for us, is most clearly expressed in the Gospels.’
    I understood this, yes. But I also knew that God spoke especially clearly through Leo Tolstoy. Divine light shone through his prose. And I tried to live by that light as I made my daily rounds in the village. The medical profession is well suited to a life of service, and I returned to my narrow room each night in