The Murder of Leo Tolstoy. By Elif Batuman

The Murder of Leo Tolstoy. By Elif Batuman

From 2010 The Best American Essays

 

P7. on a tree stump in these very woods in 1909, Tolstoy signed a secret will. He left all his copyrights in the control of Chertkov and of his youngest daughter, Sasha, a fervent Tolstoyan. Tis has long been Sonya’s worst fear…. one afternoon in September 1910, Sonya marched into Tolstoy’s study with a child’s cap pistol and shot Chertkov’s picture, which she then tore into pieces and flushed down the toilet.

 

P.11 Sonya has, in addition to motive, a known interest in poisons. “I have consulted Floinsky’s book on medicine to see what the effects of opium poisoning would be,” she wrote in her diary in 1910. “ First excitement, then lethargy, No antidote.”

 

Perhaps Sonya had used atropine to simulate the effects of a stroke. She might not have intended to kill her husband-just to furnish grounds to invalidate his will. But in his atropine- induced delirium, Tolstoy had embarked on a bizarre and fatal flight.

 

On her death bead, Sonya made a strange confession. “I want to tell you,’ she said, breathing heavily and interrupted by spasms of coughing, ‘I know that I was the cause of your father’s death.’”

 

Jun 21, 2019

亨