In Performance; The Parish Players Perform "The Marriage"

Ed barn a poet from Brandon Vermont the engineers for this segment of tonight's in performance were IRA Wilner Sam Sanders and Jeffrey Brown. You're listening to public radio WB PR in Windsor Vermont at eighty nine point five megahertz in this second hour of in performance a radio production with the Perrys players entitled marriage by Edward Tyler based on the diaries of Leo and Sonia. You are so pure and I am ashamed to let you see me as I. But nothing must be hidden so you must.

Hear it always. My gambling my tooth aches and my chasing after women in our circle and peasant women. Please no. I tell you to. There must be no secret. In the forty eight years of their marriage Count Leo Tolstoy and his wife saw in your shed many secrets. Their letters and diaries echoed suspicions jealousies in a turmoil and above all an intense erotic love. Tolstoy began writing as diaries in 1847 revealing to the entire literary world his search for perfect truth in an imperfect society. Sonia became a diligent assistant to Tolstoy copying his diaries faithfully. She copied his novels and articles too while raising eight of their 13 children to maturity. It is the summer of 1862 Tolstoy is 34 years old. He personally manages his large estate in the last nigh up all Yana

and after many unhappy Tolstoy is looking for a wife who will serve him faithfully and without question he writes feverish about politics. The state of mankind. God and the newfound influence love. It did like that my first thought this morning is that you and I sit down to write to you not to keep a promise but because I want it all the way here. Your favorite The foolish man was completely out of hand he jabbered and grinned and made absurd plans. I began to be afraid of him. He kept remembering your whispering voice and the way you hop up and down when you dance and your bad temper when you are casting your line at the Grumman pond wearing enormous knitted boots. The foolish man wanted to rush back to say a lot of foolish things to you and never leave you again. But his friend the good man whom you don't like said to the foolish man you were lying when you say you are happy with us.

It's true you feel pleasure in listening to her and looking into her eyes. But that isn't happening there's beauty you can get to know and love in an hour and stop loving just as quickly. But the soul takes a long time to know and love. The first man isn't the foolish one. It's the other who rides away from where he wants to be. Bites his lips and turns to wood. I like that. Off. I liked him. What if you love me you have to love me as I am. I need to know you first so that I can love you. You must not hide things from me for three days you tease me with your little secret. I wasn't joking when I said there must be no secrets. If my wife were to make a surprise for me something trivial as a question and kept it a secret from me I would run away from her the next day. Do you think you can live with such a monster. Sometimes I find him so oh boring so. But there are the times and they're not real.

When I am sick with love of him. Do you really think that I couldn't do what you do. Melt like a noodle. My special feeling for you is that I have for no one else is this. As soon as anything bad happens to me a failure a blow to my self-esteem. I remember you and I think it doesn't. Matter I have Sonia it's a pleasant feeling. How do you think about me. It hurts me to look at him. Well being near him just must go to the devil to the nearest thing. There's no longer love or jealousy or regret or anything I have ever known. It is very sweet like a bit of hope mixed with good comfortable feeling. Her voice too is sad. Peaceful. Haven't you ever been in love before. I want to laugh. I am suddenly wildly happy. Toothless old fool that I am I have fallen in love. I did not sleep

all night so clear was the picture I was painting of my happiness in the evening. We talked of love from bad to worse. I am in love as I did not believe it possible. I am insane. I should put a bullet in my head if this goes on much longer. Lord help me. Son. I'm going to yeah. The situation has become intolerable. Every day for three weeks I have sworn to myself today I shall speak. And every day I beat you with the same anguish the same regret the same terror the same joy in my heart. I am bringing this letter with me to give to you in case I lack the opportunity or the courage to speak. Tell me tell me fully do you want to be my wife. Don't say yes unless you are absolutely sure if you have the shadow of a doubt that it is better to say

no. You do say no it will be awful for me but I am expecting it and shall find the strength to bear Well of course. What an. Innkeeper opened up the Czar's chambers train. Coaches stopping door slam rooms cursed. She knows all nine simple.

Her terror or something. It is two weeks now. I feel clean. Living with another person makes such a difference almost frightening one feels life so intensely every second is an illness. She's reading this and doesn't understand a thing. He's mistaken. I understand everything absolutely everything that concerns him. You see it's lonely here. We were so lively at home here when leo was away it's like death. He has always lived alone so he doesn't understand. He makes me sick with his presence. He's going to have to choose between me and those peasants he loves so much. It's selfish of me. Well too bad.

I live for Him and by him and I wanted to be the same for him. If I am only apply thing not a human being then I neither can nor will go on living like this. She doesn't realize how much she has changed my life. He loves me just the way he loves nature his precious presence even his writing one after the other and the craze passes and he loves something else. I love her more and more. Today after seven months a feeling of humility came over me. I saw her as good and pure and virginal. I feel I do not possess her even though she gives me all of herself. I do not possess her because I am not worthy. That is why my happiness isn't complete. Something keeps tormenting me when he embraces me. I know I'm not the first person he has crushed to him. It is bitter and painful to think that my simply husband is just like the rest of the world.

I love when it night or early in the morning I wake up and find her looking tenderly at me. I love her when she is sitting close to me and we both are feeling that we love each other with all our strength. And when after we have been silent for a long time I finally say well son what shall we do now. I love her when she is angry at me and suddenly widens her eyes and tries to look mean and snarls. Leave me alone. You're bothering me. And the next minute she is smiling shyly at me. I love to see her head thrown back her face solemn and frightened. In love as I have never been before. And with whom.

A fat peasant a vulgar woman with greasy white skin and she's still in the house. I dreamed I was arguing with her. She insolently wore a black silk dress. In a rage I seized the child in her arms and wore out its arms its legs its head. Was in a. Ring. Leo came and picked up the scattered pieces and comforted me he told me it was only a dollar. I looked and it was only strips of deerskin and wads of cotton. If only I could earn his diary and his past with it if I could kill him and create a new person exactly like you. Leo resents my weakness. As though it were my fault that I am pregnant and I have ceased to exist. I can give him no joy since I'm right. Yesterday I ran through the garden hoping to start a miss but nature is strong as steel.

And. The doctor said. You have a son. I saw a strange reddish creature with you. I had to make an enormous effort to believe that son YOUR was still alive. That she was all right that this wailing baby was my son. Wife. Who was. Where did it come from. He says it's monstrous not to nurse one's child. Well some says it isn't but it is physically impossible. God knows I tried. It was excruciating. My breasts were to shoot. He would banish me from the earth because I am suffering and I cannot bear him because he is not suffering just writing about it. I will certainly take care of my son and do everything I can but not for LEO or his score. I know that I have many feelings but I thought I had some kindness

and generosity. I have been rude and callous. I'm talking. To the one creature who has given me happiness and who alone loves me. One o'clock in the morning already and I can't sleep at all much less in her room with her. She begins to whine and moan as soon as she knows there is someone to listen. Just now she is snoring peacefully away. She will wake up absolutely convinced that she is the most unfortunate woman alive. It is time to take my sword down from its rusty nail and offer my services to the Czar to war. EVERYTHING in Him is flux. The day he gets married the idea appeals to him. He has children to morrow. This life does not suit me and often gallops to the wars. All I can hope is that the child will die because I don't

want to live without Leo. I don't understand such juvenile enthusiasms in a man of 35. He is ready to abandon us because he thinks it's fun to charter a boat and hear the shell whistling. War and Peace is published in 1865 Gania of the Russian critic wrote. There are passages that will live as long as the Russian language. Tolstoy is a giant among his fellow writers.

War and Peace is incoherent absurd even but immense and so intelligent. Time it is eight years old. Had she been Adam's first born and had there been no others after her she would have been an unhappy little girl. Her greatest pleasure is looking after the younger ones. She takes a physical pleasure in holding and touching a little body. Her dream is to have children. The other day I took her to the city. She begged me to buy a little knife for search something for this one something for that. She knows just what will give each one of them the greatest pleasure. I bought nothing for her. And not for one moment did she think of herself. As we were driving home I asked. He was asleep. No. What are you thinking about. I was thinking about how when we get home I'll ask my ma whether Ilya has been good and I'll give him his present and give the others theirs.

Everything depends on mama she gives orders to the cook she sends us out for walks mends our stockings and underclothes makes our skirts yells at us when we get our shoes wet. She copies everything that papa writes. Whenever we have jelly putting it tells us that it is good for gluing boxes. This makes mama very cross. He rides a horse better than anyone. He runs faster than anyone he is stronger than anyone in the world. He doesn't punish us when he looks into my eyes he knows everything I'm thinking. It's scary. We can for Mama but not no one ever lies to him. He knows all our secrets. When we played house under the lilac bush we had three secrets which nobody but Yulia and Sergey and I knew one day papa said he knew all our secrets and they all began with B. It was true. The first was that my mother was going to have another baby. The second was that Ceres was in love with the baroness and the third.

I don't remember my mom makes jam in the garden under the trees. There's the smell of coal from the burning Brazier the jam bubbles sickly and rises in the pink foam bees and wasps swarm around it smell so good we can hardly wait for a taste of the skim schemas. What do you can't have any now that would spoil your appetite. Just a little taste. I said no but in the end we get not only the skim but a little of the jam too. In the summer we run in the waist high grass not grass. It is almost all flowers yellow pink red blue white. The moment has begun. The hay gives off a sleepy smell. Barefoot village girls bring wooden bowls filled with white mushrooms and wild strawberries. They pour them out onto a stone where platter more fragrances more perfumes. Oh how they smell these damp white mushrooms and brown can't believe he's and saffron milk caps and honey Agric says my father has never held me or petted me or kissed me.

It isn't that he doesn't love me. I know he loves me but he never touches me or tells me he calls people who do that sort of thing sloppy sentimental. If we want sympathy or feel like balling we run to mama. My life has become very sober. Leo sits behind a stack of books portraits pictures frowning reading examining taking notes in the evening when the children are in bed he tells me what he hopes to write. He has chosen the period of Peter the Great. I think it's going to be another epic like war and peace. I am depressed and write nothing. You can't imagine how difficult I find this preparatory work of plowing deeply the field which I am compelled to. I have to think and rethink everything that might happen to literally hundreds of people in a world that actually existed 200 years ago and which I am actually creating and

I have to think of a millions of possible combinations in order to choose one millionth of them today for the first time he began to write. I cannot understand what is going on in his head during the hours when he does nothing. Sometimes he thinks he is losing his mind and his fear of insanity is so intense it terrifies me. Yesterday evening Leo suddenly announced I have written a sheet and a half and I think it's coming all right. I assumed that he was trying to start up Peter the Great for the 18th time so I didn't pay much attention. But then he told me he has begun a novel on the private lives of contemporary people. It is about an unfaithful wife. We are going through a family crisis. Our last born has water on the brain. In the last four months he has gone through every phase of the disease. My wife feeds him herself part of the time she is in despair at the thought that he is going to die. And part of the time she is in terror that he may live and remain in India. I'm deeply worried for my wife for her died

peacefully. I nursed him for 1 1/2 months from June 13th 1872 to November 9th 1873. OK healthy child. I loved him so much. What. And to us now I cannot reconcile the images of Peter alive in Peter the both precious to me. But what is there in common between the form of light life affection and this other ocean less solemn whole. I need to chatter pal accounts. I would like to be admired and to hear people tell me that I'm beautiful. I never thought I was. But there is so little time before I'm old. Much good it would do me to be beautiful. My babies love their plane as much as they would love a great meal would have grown accustomed to the ugliest woman alive. She did what he told it to. Feel like.

Nobody was seeing me but it would be pretty. New. England. After writing that. I feel like. All right. So you own 5000 acres of land. You will be more famous than go go. Pushkin Shakespear Motier and all the writers of the world and then what. You can't stop and you can't close your eyes so that you don't see that ahead is nothing. And then I hear laughter as someone who's worked everything out a long time ago and is laughing at me that someone is enjoying himself watching how after cultivating my body and mind for 40 years here I stand like an idiot realizing there is nothing and never will be anything in life. And he thinks it's funny. As I undress I

look at the cross bar between the two cabinets loaded with books that would hold my weight. A slipknot. The chair kicked away a body. The jerks sways back and forth stops. No more Leo Tolstoy. So I have removed the rope from the room and I have stopped taking my gun along on my walks. Something in us is broken. I have lost my faith and happiness and life. I am revolted by everything I have written. All that I have. Thought to be scratched now thrown away. The question of the soul is the only question in this world. There are happy people winless ones who lurch about in the mud. Then there are men who let their wings grow who rise slowly from the earth and saw above it. Then there are men with

broad powerful wings who are light in the thick of the human crowd for the sheer pleasure of it. The crowd tears their wings. They try to thrust upwards with their crippled wings and collapse back to Earth. I am one of those but my wings will heal. I shall fly very hard. Make God help me. I don't understand what Popeye wants anymore. He wanted me to do things to swim to ride to hunt. He wanted me to know things he wanted me to be a told story. I tried. Now he looks at me as though I make him sick. Propound them are always quarrelling but passim so alone his eyes are strange and staring. He hardly speaks. He seems to be not in this world and never jokes anymore. It's like someone in the Bible.

I used to think it unfair that I should not be allowed to see the fruit of my labor. Now it is clear that what a man does out of love without reaping any reward is the work of God. He is wasting his energy in foolishness learning Hebrew like a seminarian he is throwing away his career as a chef. You are showing what I do will not be truly good until I am no longer around to spoil it. Leo is very calm. He is working. Writing articles. He is a man ahead of his time. He marches in front of the crowd and shows the way it must follow. And I am one of the crowd. I see the light and made a hell of their time like Leo. And I say. Yes there is the light but I can't walk in the faster. I have no completely absorbing work in progress and so I am painfully sensitive to the life around me and to my own life. They are repulsive. It's too bad that I won't be confined before summer. I should so like to get the ghastly thing over with before then. The best season

swimming has a long day's Woollett nights. I'll be spending in bed with a squalling baby my 12th and even dozen She is obsessed with her pregnancy it is a great sin a shame why I talk about it if you can't put it right. Perhaps when I pray God teach me. How do we exist. How to live so that my life will not be loathsome to me. I am waiting for him to teach me. Thank you. This summer everyone seeing you has been infected with my father's passion for work and very hot. You have to get the hand quickly because the RA is almost right. The

grass is stiff as wire. You can only cut it early in the morning when the dew is still on it. We mow in games. My father and I and my sister Matia and two of our presents are in one Sergey and Leo and Tanya and the cousins are in the other. Our gang is very strict and serious. We are called the same. The others play it. One of my father's younger disciples keeps visiting us once after breakfast we went out to the tool shed to get what we needed. He came with us but didn't pick up any tools. Where are you going to the village but forward to hell here. Take a rake at least you can help hand out straw. I shall help organize. He was just he was completely insane.

If you refused to have anything to do with the government and its taxes and its laws and if you refused to take any income from your lands don't you have to become a tramp or a beggar who pays any attention to. We'll go out in the mud. No one will see it but it only seems he will always be with other people if he has any. If you believe that why are you doing it. I try to look at the way I was and the way I am now. I haven't because I don't know how to show me how to escape. Help me. And don't condemn what I am trying to do. If I know the road home but stagger along get drunk and fall into a ditch that doesn't make the road wrong. If I fall help me up and help me along the road as I am ready to help you I want to run up and down the street shouting Tolstoy Tolstoy.

I want everyone to stop whatever they are doing just stop and listen to you. The first temptation is to rush out and try to turn everyone else around. Make sure you are turned around and solid. You can only change other people when you are changed. And that takes time and work. Whenever you tell me anything I think that's so simple. And then that's true. And then that's marvelous and then I feel such a rush of happiness. I have to sing or rush out and give money to the beggars. I would like to say that I am happy to but I can't. I have no relations with people around me. Beggars come to me and I give them coppers and they go away. My own children edge away. My wife busied herself at the piano. Of course I am to blame but I long for some understanding people. There are times when you pull hard and feel strong. But there are other times when you just want to be able to put yourself into the hands of people you trust.

I always thought that each person was sealed up inside himself. Then I met you and I found out that souls are open to other souls. I would like to know you better. I want to see whether you are always so tense. I once started to write about Peter the Great and I found that all the evil that he did was caused by the fact that he kept too busy people to drive themselves like that are always discontented with themselves and especially with other people. So be calm and I would like to live with you. You will for a while me. If I were not so cautious you would find me hammering on your door but if I were there I could not really serve you by staying here. I can get your words out to every Russian who can read how wise you are. Don't ever stop loving me as I love you. I. Wish she would stop playing Robinson Crusoe. It is wrong to waste your

great intellect on chopping wood heating samovars and making boots. They make nice little amusements but you can't seriously make them your life's work. I tried to comfort myself with the saying never mind what game the baby plays as long as it keeps him from crying her soul is opaque and dead. I could bear that but she is so positive that she alone is right. You and I have been following different paths since childhood. You love the country and country people. I find them slovenly and dull. You refuse to understand that there has been a revolution in my life. I need a real work real Earth Review people. It is a pity you don't love your own children. If they were some peasant woman's You would be entranced by them. I have the feeling that I am the only sane man in a mad house run by Mad Men. I have 10 children to take care of. I cannot turn myself into a weather vane spinning around a point wherever your fancy lights. I

know that in you it is thirst for truth but in me it would be just blind mimicry. Don't you see that. This emotional tug of war is awful painful sad. I would give anything to know how you are but I'm afraid to touch your wounds which are not only on healed but have started to bleed again. I was the one who wanted to go away and it was you who left. I am always the one who stays behind. I've been was the thirteenth child my mother bore 9 she nursed herself during the first 13 years of their marriage she was pregnant for one hundred and seventeen months. Through those years and through all that followed she loved him and cared for him with a maternal obsessiveness. She took seriously his slightest indisposition. She had special dishes prepared for him daily There was always a special porridge special

mushrooms cauliflower and artichokes brought from town. And so that he wouldn't refuse to eat them she never let him know what they cost because Leah votes girl likes to eat a piece of fruit before going to bed every evening there was a pear an apple a peach on his night table. This continued even went all over Russia. People were reading the chords or Sonata as my father's confessions of his disgust with their marriage. I hereby grant to all who wish it the right to publish without payment in Russia and abroad. All the works written by me since the year 1881 everything he does comes from his need to be talked about. He keeps talking about Christian love when he does not have one drop of love even for his children or for me or for anyone but himself. All you have done is to make your children poor and your publishers rich out.

What a strange man my husband is. The day after we quarrelled he assured me of his passionate love and of my great influence over him. But with him it is all. In my heart of hearts that is not what I want but what I ever wanted. I don't live purely help me my God. I have lost my way. For the first time in my life I am caught in a situation from which there is no way. We have very terrible. Terrible great spiritual events. I am grateful to you father. When I die I wish to be buried in a cheap coffin with out flowers wreaths or

speeches of my own published papers to my wife son and my best friend jack off let my private diaries stay as they are so that the world may see that those shameless in my youth. God did not for save me and late in life. I did begin to understand him a little and to love. Search to Najaf and his wife are coming for two weeks. We will have concerts every evening and annoys me. For a curious he acts like the cock of the walk in my house. Life is only worth living with there is news tonight you have tried to prove to me in jest that Christ was in favor of castration. I might have killed him. Searched and I have left here a month ago and I still see him in Moscow in a few days. Time. But what I shall feel when I see him again. Perhaps joy. Perhaps nothing at all. I don't want to give up his friendship. So soon.

Tend. You told me. Because you said you wouldn't go to tonight's rehearsal. When you did. You can't help toying with him. It excites you and my jealousy excites you. You are Tory. The game is terribly painful to me. Because so pleasant to have a friend like him is like someone calm. Gifted. I feel so a little guilt in such peaceful joy in this friendship that I could no more give it up than I could give up seeing thinking breathing your affair with. Poisoning and shortening my life. Right here now I haven't been able to work this. I have told. I have told you. And lately I haven't said anything. I haven't told leo that surge is coming to spend a whole week. I can't hide my joy at the thought of having someone to play music with again.

I am going away I need to be alone. The children are now so grown and my influence in this house has so little weight I am no longer needed. And all of you have more to live for us. At. The end of the affair was not so dramatic and I have had always thought of himself as a friend of the family whose music pleased both my father and my mother. He thought of my mother's infatuation as a conventional flirtation. When he found out otherwise he discreetly dropped out of our circle. I woke up and there you were. I am 69 and you are 53 and I can't remember such a flood of joy. You ask whether I still love you. My feelings never change. We are bound together by the past and the children.

The awareness of our faults and compassion and an irresistible attraction wrapped up and tied together. And I'm glad. I am very busy with my new book resurrection. I think it will be important as a project gather speed nearing the earth so as the end of my novel approaches can think of nothing else absolutely nothing else.

I read and it seems to me I am not reading but walking and I see these people these souls these rooms. What a miracle it is your resurrection. All Russia is living and feeding on this book. When resurrection was received in Moscow the church took drastic action in response to the anti-church statements in the book. Tolstoy was excommunicated. The church issued this proclamation. God has permitted a new false prophet to appear in our midst. A world famous author Russian by birth Count Leo Tolstoy his insolently dead to oppose God Christ and His holy as openly and in sight of God he has denied the mother who nurtured him. The Orthodox Church. Therefore the church no longer recognizes him amongst her children. I believe in God the Spirit Love and

principle of all things. I believe he is in me and I am in him. I believe the purpose of life is to increase the sum of love for him. I believe there is only one means of progressing in love prayer. It says right on the front page with the print of the excommunication. We have two czars Nickolas the second and Leo Tolstoy which is the stronger Nicolas The second is powerless against Tolstoy whereas Tolstoy shakes the throne. The synod publishes a decree against him with the whole power of the church and state behind it and all the machinery of the nations presses Tolstoy and his on a sheet of paper. His answers circulates on handwritten copies. But let anyone lift a finger against Tolstoy and the whole world will be up in arms. Dear brother you know now that

your Imperial Majesty. Now dear brother you have probably been deceived about the people's love for you by the fact that everywhere in Moscow and in other cities where you were poor crowds of people run after you shouting. If you could as I can walk along the lines of peasants strung out behind the soldiers or along an entire railway line while the Czar passes you would hear what they are really saying. Village elders and peasants that policemen have rounded up from neighboring villages and who have waited for days in the cold and slush for the Czar to pass swear and laugh at you. Brother you have only one life in this world and you can waste it in games of power or you can live it in the service of God and read the letter he said.

We will do you know Count Tolstoy the martyr's crown he so obviously cuts. I went out with my skis and gone along a forest road. A drunken peasant picked me up and kissed me and said that I was his father the kindest most perfect creature in the world. Is that drunken. I found out your little secret. Why you and Chad cough are

such good friends. That man has given up everything for me. His wealth his career his position in society. He has been arrested jailed the ported he has devoted his whole life to making people read my books translating traveling publishing. So you say now but I've been reading your diaries. Have you forgotten you wrote November 29 1851. I have never been in love with a woman but I have often fallen in love with a man. For me love is mostly fear. Fear of offending the one i love of not pleasing him or just fear you and scrawny little chap cough are writing love letters to each other having little trysts. That's what you don't want me to know. I wasn't even a man when I wrote that shame. Get out. If you are trying to kill me you will soon succeed. It is the spirit of the evil in charge cough the frightened inertia is the lesser evil.

Do nothing say nothing. Answer every provocation with side its where you love then why Christ silence is so my life is so full of contradictions it has become a comedy. I write the most significant works of our time and spend the rest of my time at the whim of a mad woman. I feel like a schoolboy and not a very bright one at that. Every day the reproaches and tears. Today was a particularly bad one. There were threats about the will. Every day US KMI how I am how I slept and every day you drive new bills into my coffin. Thank you contrive to show me a copy of your will the will you said you would never make. Just give away your copyrights checkoff ever give anything

away. No. No only you. Your grand children will starve to feed your vanity. I said nothing. She has just interrupted to ask me to read her parts from my diaries when I was in love with her more tears to tell Tanya. Please Tanya try to make your mother understand that life with all this spying and eavesdropping he's everlasting reproach is this ordering me about this everlasting checking up on me this hatred for the man who is the closest and most necessary for me and his obvious hatred of me. But pretense of love that such a life is utterly impossible. I want only one thing to be free of her and all her lies and malice. Of course no one can make her understand this. But can you make her understand that her behavior toward me doesn't express love but is an attempt to kill me.

Once the doctor gave my ma some medicine. All at once she shouted for us all to come quickly charge the poor man with poisoning her and threw the medicine in his face. She bought a toy gun and sometimes at night would fire it out her window. She became pathologically suspicious and began to eavesdrop and spy on father. Most of the time she simply followed him around. But I know she was opening his letters stealing his notes reading his for myself alone diary with. Alexándra. He writes to his wife and children and

refuses to see. A. Companion of my whole life. I'll do anything everything you want I'll give up every luxury. I will be mom. And. Your friends will be my. Compact. You have to see me. You know it is written in the Gospels that a man must not abandon his wife. Friend Come back come back if only to say good bye to me before we part for. You. Love you and pity you with my soul but I can't do otherwise than I am doing. Your letter was written but it isn't in your power to do the things you promise. I would be renouncing life if I came back to the state you are now.

Life isn't a joke and we have no right to throw it away nor to measure it by days or years. Perhaps the months that are left to us are more important than all the years we have lived already. For the first time I thought what it was like to be homeless. We were in a smoke filled the second class railroad car with strangers all around and not a single corner in which a. Man could lie down. Everything was fine. I would like to see. If I watched through the balcony door while you played solitaire. Or followed you when you went riding. Or tried to find you when you were out walking. It wasn't because I didn't trust you but because I love you. You became more gloomy and morose. You ignored me. You held out your

cup to somebody else and asked them to pour your tea. You didn't talk to me. As far as you're concerned I had a stupid habit to feeling in the dark as I went by to see that it was still on the desk. I glanced into the study on my way downstairs the night you left and I touched the notebook with my hand. I didn't rummage around. I didn't read anything. But you would have left anyway. Sure you would. Don't be afraid I won't come to you without your permission. I must get back my strength. Don't be afraid of me. I would rather die than see the horror on your face at the sight of me. Ilya think of your own life who you are and what you think about. I say it probably on the eve of my death because I love you. Try to calm your mother for whom I

have the most genuine compassion and love. Do not fear that I shall come hurrying in search of you. I am so weak I can scarcely move. Do what you feel is best. I have a strange present to me. That we are never to meet again. Awaken the love in you and you will see how much love you will find in. My. Friend. Who loves me. How much has fallen on Sony. Do you want to see her do you want to see Sonia. I can't seem to get to sleep. I'm still composing still writing each thing flows into the next. The truth I keer

for. Count Leo Tolstoy died in a small train station and asked a poet at the age of 82. When the officials recognized the author was dying they sent for Sonia. But she was not at his side when he died. She stood at the window of the station. Do you ever think of papa. I never do anything else. I have

never stopped living by his side and I torment myself because I was not. Good and. It was always. Body and Soul. I was only 18 years old when I married him and I never loved any one ounce. You have been listening to a marriage by Edward Tyler. David Klein played Leo Tolstoy. Gillion Tyler played sauna. Norn Faris was Tania. Richard Noble was chair of. Neil Macleod Marie was Illya. This programme was produced in the studios of Vermont Public Radio by Frank Kaufman.

The engineers were Felixstowe and Joshua Landis special thanks to Richard Sheldon of the dogmatic college Russian Department and to seal slaughter and Daniel Hertz left for their assistance. I'm John O. Performance is made possible in part by Karen form the art

and the production.