It Can Be Easily Changed
It was the third day of my long-awaited vacation. However, the
so-called vacation turned out to be an intensive period of solving the backlog of problems
which had gradually collected during my last period of non-stop work. That day I had to
get up early to go and see the doctor.
In a cold, queue-filled corridor I learnt about all kinds of diseases
that arise after the age of 65 and the different secrets of folk and modern medicine that
help one to survive if everything is going terribly. I received a full update on the
latest news in politics and played the silent partner in a conversational monologue with
an old lady who was complaining about her grandchildren’s lifestyle, generously endowing
me with praises for being free from cigarette addiction.
My eyesight is quite poor, so I didn’t expect to hear anything
encouraging except for possibly a recommendation to reduce computer work and stress in
life. After I left the white building, my only desire was to get home as soon as possible,
to fall into my bed and finish the sacred sleep that had been cruelly interrupted. Taking
my usual way home I noticed a quiet side-street that seemed to shorten the distance to the
metro and I decided to try it out.
The cold had frozen me to the bone and I was walking very quickly
paying little attention to the surrounding buildings. Moving onwards, the cold adding to
the misery of the day’s events, I suddenly lifted my head and I noticed an unusual
old-fashioned wooden fence that partitioned off an alluring 2-storey wooden house from the
rest of the crumbling Soviet buildings. I was wearing my now helpless glasses that were
hardly helping me to see about 30% of the world around me, but I succeeded to read on the
door-plate: “The Estate of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy”. Instinctively, I turned right
and went into the house.
It was very quiet inside and an old lady helped me to take off my coat
and invited me to the first room with a gentle and friendly smile – a bit unusual for
Russian museums. I entered a cozy dining room and found a small group of Chinese students
who were listening attentively to a guide. The lady was speaking rich, expressive and
astonishingly proper Russian that you can hardly hear nowadays, and I thought that if I
joined the excursion it would be mutually beneficial since I would be the only one who
could appreciate the beauty of the language.
Everything that filled the house had been in use by Lev Tolstoy and his
family. I remember the wooden furniture, crockery, and textiles that were very simple,
some hand made, but very attractive. These made me feel very comfortable and warm. We were
moving from one room to another listening to endless stories about its owners, scanning
the interior, pictures, toys and trying to imagine and comprehend what kind of people the
Tolstoys were, what kind of lifestyle they had, what was important for them. Each room had
its own personality, its own soul; here was where the children played; here where they
studied, and their mum watched them sitting on a rocking chair and probably crocheting; in
the next room the older sister spent her hours in solitude painting and then possibly
gossiping with her girl-friends.
We started to climb upstairs. The hand rails were covered with white
cloth with a red playful fringe and at the stair-well there was a bear standing with a
small salver in his forepaws where, as we were told, the guests were supposed to leave
their visiting cards. Surmounting the second part of the stairs we found ourselves in a
large spacious waiting-room with a big table, on the left, a piano on the right, and a
chess-table in the corner. I can’t distinctly describe the interior of the room, but I
had a feeling that if there had been music playing I would have started dancing
straightaway on that parquet that was shining so invitingly. We were told that in this
room Rachmaninov and Skryabin had often played the piano, and Shalyapin had sung, and I
thought that I would give everything just to somehow shift back to that era. On the
mantelpiece there was a picture of the Tolstoys, they were all standing together, smiling,
– a big, friendly family. It crossed my mind whether it is possible to meet such a big
family nowadays. For a number of reasons people became greedy on the number of children.
We name it family planning, but it seemed to me that the people used to be much happier.
We followed the guide and she showed us the small tiny room of one of
Tolstoy’s daughters, who didn’t want to have anything superfluous in her room, then
servant’s quarters, and the last room was the office room of Lev Nikolaevich where his
masterpiece “Voskresenie” was written. The excursion was over, the lady thanked us for
our attention and the group went towards the exit. I didn’t want to leave the house, I
felt like the house didn’t want to let me go.
I was walking back rediscovering the rooms again and again when I was
suddenly asked by an old lady “Do you speak Russian?” I nodded my assent. “We have
mostly foreigners here.” I shrugged my shoulders, perplexed. “This house is very
special, there are only originals here. Every small thing reminds of the Tolstoys and has
its own story.” And she started telling me different stories, some were very funny and
some were genuinely touching. “When the house was opened as a museum the Tolstoy’s
children were invited. They walked silently around the rooms and said finally: ‘It is
amazing. Everything is like mama and papa are still living here and just about to enter
the house after some short absence.’ So you can consider that you visited the family of
Tolstoy, but they were not at home.” – the lady finished with a smile. At this I felt
a tear rolling slowly down my cheek.
I spent some more time at the Tolstoys trying to absorb everything with
my eyes. It was absolutely silent, but still there was something in the air that made this
house alive. I slowly went downstairs, wanting to leave my visiting card on the salver.
When I went out I noticed that the sun was shinning and it was
absolutely beautiful outside. All my problems had dissipated, I was smiling and I felt at
ease with myself. I thought about how I so often tend to look deep inside and pity myself
for being so lonely, so unhappy. But it turned out to be surprisingly easy to change
everything simply by looking outside and noticing how beautiful and interesting the world
around is.
By Lyubov Gribanova
Музей-усадьба Л.Н. Толстого: г. Москва,
Пречистенка, 11 (м. "Кропоткинская")
Тел./факс (495) 202-21-90
Тел./факс (495) 246-94-44
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