Destined Destination

[death]

“Lev, you know we love your writing,” Mikhail Katkov said to the incensed writer. “But the last installment of your novel is a catastrophe.”

Lev sat with folded arms across his chest. If he spoke, he knew that all hell would shake the corridors of the Herald.

“My wife believes it is a great novel,” Lev finally said through clenched teeth.

“Naturally your wife would say that … she’s your wife. Lev, I’m giving you my honest gut opinion – you will be laughed out of the country or stoned if we publish this.”

The publisher continued, “Chapter 31 was ghastly melodramatic mush. Many readers wrote complaining.”

The old man sat at the railway station remembering the conversation from decades ago. The cold November wind penetrated his winter coat, inducing a rasping cough that burned his lungs as he doubled over with hacking. He noticed several people looking his way; he didn’t care. He knew his freedom was forthcoming.

Lev remembered that day, though, when Katkov had sliced his novel to shreds with his caustic tongue. The pig. “Surely, the tongue is a wicked device,” he mentally recited the scripture.

Lev recalled the loathing that he had felt towards Katkov during that meeting – the loathing that still engaged his mind today. He had cast his pearl before a swine. What more could he have expected?

The old man looked up to the heavens and grinned. He got the last laugh on Katkov. His story was a great triumph. His wife had been correct. She had foreseen the novel’s universal success.

Sonya had possessed some good points at one time. Their marriage had been pleasant in the beginning. Yet, she failed to meet his zeal for Christian poverty, and she didn’t fully understand the passion of his writing. He considered her no longer fit to be his wife; and so, he finally had left her. Lev had a higher calling. He had an appointment with destiny, and he wasn’t going to miss it. He was finally going to reunite with his mistress, his muse, the loveliest flower that he had once crushed.

She had been unfaithful to him and to her own husband – it was true. So, it was only right that he destroyed her, Lev reasoned in his mind, as he had for years. Nonetheless, it had always haunted him, the way he had punished her in death. He had callously shoved her into an oncoming train. However, when he saw her sweet repentance, seconds before her death – he had immediately regretted the decision. But what could he do at that point? The deed had been done. Perhaps her horrific death was the catalyst that gave her a penitent spirit at last. His beautiful Anna.

Although she had died, he always felt her near him. She had forgiven him as he had forgiven her, and he knew their spirits were entwined forever. He felt her presence as he walked, as he slept, as he dreamed – she was always near, loving him and guiding him.

Lev began coughing again. His lungs felt as if a fire were lit from inside, and the burning pain was excruciating.

“Lev, what are you doing out here?”

Lev tried to answer but he couldn’t catch his breath.

“You should not have come outside,” the doctor said.

“We are going to stay at this train station until your health improves. Then, we will continue our trip to Bulgaria. The stationmaster has prepared a room for you.”

Lev wanted to tell the good doctor that this station was his destiny. His health wouldn’t improve. He was predestined to die at a railway station, as did his beloved Anna – but the old man couldn’t utter the words.

The doctor and a train porter slowly and carefully walked the sick old man to the stationmaster’s quarters.

For the next seven days, Lev’s health continued to decline. He had pneumonia in both lungs. He was often delirious. He would talk to God and cry out for a woman named Anna.

Lev’s wife arrived, but the doctor and Lev’s children believed that her presence would only upset him. In his fading lucidity, Lev had denounced her.

Sonya still loved Lev, but she knew his mistress had triumphed. She meekly accepted the curse of a discarded wife with dignity and resignation. Somehow, she had known Anna would win in the end. In retrospect, Sonya realized it was her own fault.

She had known about Anna from the beginning. A wife senses these things. Anna was beautiful and vivacious – who could resist her? Yet, she was an unfaithful woman. Sonya knew that Anna would never be loyal – it wasn’t in her impetuous, neurotic nature.

So, Sonya had fought for what she believed was right. Afterall, Lev was her husband. She had convinced him that he must kill the disgraced Anna – she didn’t deserve to live. Anna didn’t deserve the adoration of Sonya’s beloved Lev.

Sonya could see that Anna’s adulterous atrocities were ripping apart Lev’s soul. Although her heartless abandonment of her family disgusted Lev’s integrity, he could not resist her seductive allure.

Lev had not wanted to kill Anna, but Sonya bombarded him daily with multiple reasons why it was for the best. Unwillingly, Lev finally surrendered to Sonya’s wishes, but he would never forgive her.

How could she have known that by Anna’s death, Lev would only become more devoted to her? Sonya bowed her head and quietly wept outside the room where Lev was dying. Now, she couldn’t even see her Lev before he died. She desperately wanted to ask his forgiveness. She was the true murderer of Anna.

As his being teetered between life and death, Lev saw his Lord and beautiful Anna standing next to him. They beckoned Lev to join them. They had met him at the train station – as destined.

Because Lev was no longer conscious, the doctor decided to let Sonya see him before his approaching death. She came into the room and kissed her husband’s forehead; however, Lev no longer felt the affects of this world. Their eldest son, Sergey, was standing nearby. He watched as his mother knelt beside the bed that enveloped her husband’s waning body.

“Forgive me…” she murmured to her husband of 48 years. Sergey heard his mother’s heartfelt apology, but he couldn’t understand her last words. Weeping had washed over her closing declaration, and the words were drowned with tears.

What she said was, “…I should have never told you to kill Anna. But I did it for you, Lev. It was for the best.”

After she left the room, Doctor Makovitsky drew Sonya into a quiet side chamber to privately speak with her.

“Who is Anna?” the doctor asked.

“You don’t know?” Sonya questioned disbelievingly.

“I have no idea,” Makovitsky responded.

“Anna was the great love of Lev’s life,” Sonya explained. “After Anna entered his life, she always stood between us. I am the one who finally told him that he must kill her.”

“Kill her? Lev killed a woman?”

“Doctor, of course he did. How can you be so obtuse? Everyone knows about it.”

Doctor Makovitsky looked puzzled and wondered if Sonya had lost her senses to consuming grief.

“Anna Karenina was Lev’s ardor and his agony,” Sonya continued. “He didn’t know how to end the imbroglio she had caused. I am the one who persuaded him to kill her.”

“Sonya, Anna Karenina is not a real person,” the doctor gently chided.

“Doctor – to every writer, his characters are real. They are a writer’s passion. They live in the writer’s mind. They are every bit as alive as the people who are flesh and blood.”

Sonya turned and looked out a window into gray-streaked skies. “He always regretted that he killed her. Because I was the person who insisted, he never forgave me,” she said flatly.

“But I knew … I knew that her tragic death was exactly what would catapult the novel to brilliance … and it did.” Sonya squared her shoulders with renewed confidence concerning her macabre campaign to end Anna’s life.

One single golden ray shined from the overcast sky through the dingy casement. Sonya faced the doctor from the window. Tears dappled her eyes, but a soft smile now graced her lips.

“Lev was preordained for greatness. He couldn’t reach the pinnacle of his destiny without killing the tarnished heroine he had created, the woman he cherished.”

A few hours later, Lev, also known as Leo Tolstoy, was liberated. He breathed one last rattled breath, then was still. At that moment, a locomotive thundered past the station, shaking the walls of the building.

Untethered, Lev ascended the heavens as the smoke from the train’s chimney. He was voyaging to his destined destination … to be with his Lord and the woman who had consumed his mind ever since her death – his great love, Anna Karenina.

References

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/mikhail-katkov-the-publisher-of-the-great-russian-novel/

This article contains information regarding Mikhail Katkov and Leo Tolstoy’s feud that started because of the novel, Anna Karenina.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1399/1399-h/1399-h.htm

This site has the entire novel of Anna Karenina. It is translated into English by Constance Garnett.

https://www.rbth.com/arts/333021-leo-tolstoy-last-days

This site presents a historical account regarding the last days of Leo Tolstoy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

This is a Wikipedia article with biographical information regarding Leo Tolstoy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Katkov

This Wikipedia article contains biographical information regarding Mikhail Katkov, the publisher who didn’t want to publish Leo Tolstoy’s final installment of Anna Karenina. Katkov was one of the editors and publishers of the Russian Messenger, also known as the Russian Herald.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Russian_Messenger

The Russian Herald or Russian Messenger is the periodical that first published Tolstoy’s works – The Cossacks, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina.