The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (3 page)

She belonged to the generation of Russian women who pursued higher education and careers following the Great Reforms of the
1860s under the Tsar Alexander II: “The idea of independence for me, a girl of the sixties, was a very precious idea.” In 1864, she entered the recently opened Pedagogical Institute to study natural sciences: “Physics, chemistry, and zoology seemed a revelation to me, and I registered in the school’s department of mathematics and physics.” But lectures on Russian literature interested her more than science classes, and after her first year she left this school without regret.

It was also a time when her elderly father became ill and she wanted to be with him to care for her “beloved invalid.” She read Dickens’s novels to him, unaware they were also Dostoevskys’ preferred reading. Her father was upset that she left school and, to assuage him, Anna enrolled in an evening course in stenography, then a novelty in Russia. A newspaper announcement said that graduates would be employed in the law courts, at meetings of learned societies, and during congresses; this, Anna felt, would give her the economic independence she yearned for.

While the first public lecture was not recorded in Russia by a stenographer until 1860, stenography had long been practiced in Germany and in England: Dickens mastered it as a young reporter covering Parliament. The first course available in 1866, which caught Anna’s attention, was taught by Professor Pavel Olkhin, who used the Gabelsberger System. A medical doctor, Olkhin also wrote books on popular subjects; one of them, a book about the final days of suicides, fascinated Dostoevsky because of his longstanding interest in the subject.
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Olkhin’s stenography course became instantly popular and drew a hundred and fifty students, but the majority soon quit. Like others, Anna was saying that it was “all gibberish” and she would never be able to master it, but her father reproached her for lack of persistence, saying she would become a good stenographer—a prophecy on his part.

When her father died later that year, Anna was so distraught that she could not attend classes. Her professor allowed her to complete the course by correspondence, and after three months of
practicing shorthand Anna had mastered the skill. By September 1866, she was the only student Professor Olkhin could recommend for literary work.

The day she received her first assignment—and with her favorite author—was the happiest of her life. Dostoevsky wanted to dictate his new novel, she was told, and would pay fifty rubles for the entire project. The idea that she was becoming independent and was able to earn money delighted her so much that “if I were to inherit 500 rubles I wouldn’t be as glad.…”
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Olkhin, however, warned Anna that Dostoevsky was difficult to get on with: “He seemed to me such a surly, gloomy man!” This did not shake her confidence because she needed the job: her family was struggling financially after her father’s death, and although they had two rental houses, generating two thousand rubles annually, there were also debts.

Anna spent a sleepless night before her appointment, worrying that Dostoevsky would examine her on his novels. “Never having known any literary celebrities in my social circle, I imagined them as being exceptional creatures who had to be spoken to in a special way.” She would discover that she remembered Dostoevskys’ works better than the writer did himself: he had only “a vague recollection” of what
The Insulted and Injured
was about, he would tell her during their courtship.

On the fateful day of October 4, she left home early to buy a supply of pencils and a portfolio to make her look more businesslike. The Alonkin house where Dostoevsky lived was a large multistoried apartment building occupied by merchants and artisans, and it instantly reminded her of Raskolnikov’s house in
Crime and Punishment
. Anna was entering the world of Dostoevskys’ heroes: a maid who opened the door was wearing a checked shawl, as in the novel, where it was a shared property of Mrs. Marmeladov and her children. She was told to wait in the poorly furnished dining room, but within minutes Dostoevsky appeared. He led her to his study, a long room with two windows and a high ceiling, which appeared strangely gloomy and hushed. Perhaps it was the dark wallpaper:
“You felt a kind of depression in that dimness and silence,”
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Anna would remember.

Dostoevsky, of average height, was dressed in a worn blue jacket. He looked rather weary and old, his face unkind, his reddish-brown hair pomaded and carefully smoothed, resembling a wig. But it was his eyes that most struck her because they were not alike—one was dark brown, while the other had a pupil so dilated that she could not see the iris. “This dissimilarity gave his eyes an enigmatic expression.”

This appearance was a result of Dostoevskys’ injury: during a recent epileptic attack, he had fallen against a sharp object. Almost at the start of the meeting, he announced that he suffered from epilepsy and had had an attack a few days earlier. As she sat at a small table by the door, Dostoevsky nervously paced the room, smoking incessantly and asking random questions.

He asked Anna why she had become a stenographer, whether it was because her family was poor. Wanting to begin the relationship on an equal footing, she replied in a businesslike way that did not allow for familiarity. Her proper behavior at once appealed to Dostoevsky, who thought his stenographer might be a Nihilist, the new type of young person, already captured in literature. (Turgenev had portrayed Russian Nihilists in
Fathers and Sons
, where he also satirized a smoking and vulgar bluestocking, Kukshina.)
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Moreover, proper young girls did not come to men’s apartments unaccompanied. Still nervous and unable to collect his thoughts, Dostoevsky repeatedly asked Anna her name and repeatedly offered a cigarette, which she declined, saying that she did not even like to watch women smoke.

To test her abilities, Dostoevsky dictated a passage from a literary magazine, beginning extremely fast, so that she had to ask him to slow down. When she transcribed her notes, he quickly read them and sharply reprimanded her for a missed comma. Eventually, he told Anna that he was unable to dictate until later that evening, but did not bother to inquire whether this suited her; she felt that he treated her “as a kind of Remington typewriter.”
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Seeing Anna to
the door, Dostoevsky told her he was glad his stenographer was a woman because she was less likely to fall into drinking habits and disrupt his work.

It is impossible to put in words what a depressing and pitiful impression Fyodor Mikhailovich produced on me during our first meeting. He seemed to me absent-minded, heavily preoccupied, helpless, lonesome, irritated, almost sick. He looked so oppressed by his misfortunes that he did not see one’s face and was unable to lead a coherent conversation.
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This impression was somewhat mended when she returned in the evening and Dostoevsky began to reminisce about his arrest in 1849. Incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress with other members of the Petrashevsky Circle and sentenced to death, he was awaiting the verdict with the other condemned, when suddenly the drums sounded a retreat. That day, when his death penalty was commuted to hard labor, was the happiest of his life, he told Anna: back in his cell, he was singing out loud. Dostoevskys’ frankness both surprised and appealed to her: “This man, to all appearances withdrawn and severe, was telling me of his past life in such detail, so openly and naturally, that I couldn’t help feeling amazed.… His frankness with me on that day … pleased me deeply and left me with a wonderful impression of him.”

Sensing that his reminiscences put him in the right mood for work, Anna would herself encourage Dostoevsky to talk about his past. He told a whole sequence of sad stories—his harsh childhood, an unhappy marriage to Marya Isaeva, who died of consumption, and a broken engagement with the writer Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya.
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When next day she arrived late for the morning dictation, Anna found Dostoevsky in panic: he imagined she had decided to quit and that the portions he had dictated would be lost. He had to deliver a full-size novel in less than a month or lose the rights
to his work for nine years. The enslaving contract had been forced on him when he was completing
Crime and Punishment
and under pressure from creditors for his late brother’s debts. Anna took this trouble close to heart, becoming determined to meet the deadline and even working nights to transcribe her notes.

Despite the pressure, they established a good working pattern with interludes to discuss the novel. It told about an obsessive gambler living in the fictional city of Roulettenburg, a story based on Dostoevskys’ own gambling escapades. When Anna condemned the gambler for his weakness, Dostoevsky explained to her the nature of the addiction he knew firsthand. She liked their evening chats—about his past and the novel—and was pleased that the brilliant writer heeded her “almost childish remarks.” He also told her about his travels abroad, how he lost at roulette in Homburg and had to pawn his suitcase. It flattered her vanity that she sat at Dostoevskys’ desk when taking his dictations, the very desk where
Crime and Punishment
was written.

Anxious about his looming deadline, Dostoevsky asked whether they could finish in time, and Anna would count up pages of the manuscript to reassure him. “He would often ask, ‘And how many pages did we do yesterday? And how many do we have altogether?’” The growing number of completed pages cheered him tremendously: Dostoevsky no longer paced the room while dictating but sat across the table from Anna reading to her from a draft he had prepared the night before.

When the work on the novel was coming to a close, he told Anna it was terribly sad for him to think he could not see her again, for where could he see her? She invited him to visit her and her mother at home. Dostoevsky asked to fix a date immediately and demanded her address (her mother lived in a desolate neighborhood near the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens); he wrote it down in his blue notebook.

On October 31, Anna brought the final pages of
The Gambler:
the novel had been completed in twenty-six days, just before the deadline. She wore a lilac dress for the first time (while mourning
her father’s death, she had dressed in black), and when she came in Dostoevsky blushed. She sensed that he would most likely propose, but did not know whether to accept, having written in her diary, “He pleases me very much, but at the same time frightens me because of his irascibility and illness.”
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Dostoevsky pinned hopes on her for a better future: “But I haven’t had any happiness yet … I still go on dreaming that I will begin a new, happy life.” He also sought her “advice” on whether he should remarry and, if so, what kind of wife he should choose—a kind or an intelligent one. She suggested an intelligent one, but he argued he needed a kind wife: “She’ll take pity on me and love me.”

Dostoevsky said that he had escaped a catastrophe thanks to her and was enormously pleased with his new way of working, so he would like to dictate to her the final installment of
Crime and Punishment
. And he wanted to celebrate the completion of
The Gambler
with few friends at a restaurant; would she join? She told him that perhaps she would, knowing in her heart that she would be too shy to come.

Because Dostoevskys’ time was consumed with writing and making a living, he could not meet women socially. The women with whom he had been involved in the past—Korvin-Krukovskaya and Apollinaria Suslova
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—were aspiring writers he met through his literary journal
Time
. (Dostoevsky had published Suslova’s first novella and had a stormy relationship with her. Suslova, twenty years his junior, matched Dostoevky’s own erratic character. Although she put him through torment, she made an important contribution because he repeatedly used her as a model for his heroines. In turn, Suslova described their relationship in her final novella.
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)

Helpless in business matters, Dostoevsky asked Anna’s opinion on what he should do if the publisher went into hiding and refused to accept his manuscript of
The Gambler
. She asked her mother to consult a lawyer who advised that Dostoevsky should obtain an official receipt for his novel from a notary or a police officer. When,
as expected, his publisher went into hiding, the receipt proved vital.

Anna was caught by surprise when Dostoevsky asked her if she had been abroad and suggested they go together next summer. Dostoevskys’ query may have been inspired by the painful memory of his European travel with Suslova three years earlier. During that disastrous trip the femme fatale fell in love with a Spanish medical student and Dostoevsky became victim to his gambling passion. Anna, who knew none of that at the time, replied diplomatically she was not sure her mother would let her go abroad. Dostoevsky saw her to the door and carefully fastened her hood. She left his apartment feeling “happy, but horribly sad,”
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likely a premonition of her destiny.

On November 8, Anna arrived to work on the third part
of Crime and Punishment
. Dostoevsky met her with a “heightened, fervid, almost ecstatic” expression, announcing that he had had a wonderful dream. He pointed to his big rosewood trunk, a treasured gift from his Siberian friend where he stored his manuscripts, letters, and things that mattered:

And so this is my dream: I was sitting in front of that box and rearranging the papers in it. Suddenly something sparkled among them, some kind of bright little star. I was leafing through the papers and the star kept appearing and disappearing. And this was intriguing me. I started slowly putting all the papers to one side. And there among them I found a little diamond, a tiny one, but very sparkling and brilliant.

The dream was a starting point for a further improvisation: he told Anna that he wanted to share with her an idea for a new novel and needed advice on the psychology of a young girl. It was a story about an elderly artist in love with an exuberant girl and hoping to find happiness. His hero was sick, debt-ridden, and gloomy, although he had “a splendid heart.” He was an artist, and a talented
one, and yet “a failure who had not once in his life succeeded in embodying his ideas in the forms he dreamed of, and who never ceased to torment himself over that fact.” The girl, on the other hand, was very nice-looking (“I love her face”) and possessed great personal tact. But what could this old artist give a young and vivacious girl? And “wouldn’t her love for him involve a terrible sacrifice on her part? … That is what I wanted to ask your opinion about, Anna Grigorievna … Imagine that this artist is—me; that I have confessed my love to you and asked you to be my wife. Tell me, what would you answer?”