My dear students of Wesleyan University,
It was I who snuck into your rooms late in the night and stole your laptops. But please, before passing judgment, hear my story. This autumn’s lasting heat has brought bad tidings for my family. Dressed in furs as is our custom, we perspire heavily. The eternal drip of sweat from my darling wife Sonya’s brow has caused her great distress and rekindled painful memories of her past. She now spends her days sitting listlessly in the drawing room, twirling in her fingers the frayed hair ribbon of her long-gone childhood friend, Natasha. Everyone in the village remembers how inseparable Natasha and Sonya were as little girls. I had even made up my mind to marry one of them as soon as they turned fourteen. Alas, one night when she was hardly eight years of age, Natasha overheard her father saying disgraceful things about the Czar, and threw herself from the roof of her family’s dacha in a fit of patriotism. Sonya has never recovered from her untimely death.
Our young son Sascha weeps hungrily at his mother’s breast, his desperate attentions yielding no milk. Sonya has lost the will to lactate. She beats the child’s head with a picture frame until, unconscious, he ceases his wailing and falls to the floor. Many times have I returned from the fields to find our faithful hound Oleg gnawing on the baby’s foot as Sonya looks on in disinterest. I fear that she does not care for Sascha because she suspects he is not hers. Truthfully, I have been unfaithful to my wife many times, and my son’s maternity may be of any number of serf women. But how to tell the boy? His infant ears would not understand the words coming from my mouth.
And so I have taken to gambling. I go to the card tables late at night and try to win enough roubles to recapture my wife’s heart. Alas, I am a poor cardsman, and Prince Alexei frequently defeats me. Prince Alexei knows that I have a weak and arrogant ego, and he goads me into playing hand after hand. Often, by three in the morning, I have lost many dozens of serfs, and he has won the very vodka from my glass and the very whore from my lap. And so I have fallen heavily into debt. Soon, they will take my horses and carriage, and in her shame, Sonya will surely throw herself and the baby into the Volga. I hope to present your stolen laptops to Prince Alexei so that he might forgive my debts. If he does not accept, I am ruined. But even as I am carted off to Siberia for the rest of my days, I will remember your generosity in trying to help a desperate man by leaving your doors unlocked and your laptops unattended. If only we did not live in a godless universe, I’m sure you would be well rewarded in heaven.
Sincerely,
Leo Tolstoy
P.S. Please stop spelling my last name “Tolstoi.” You sound pretentious.